The Last of Us: Goodbye Blue Sky
by Jack Spheniscidae Enterprises
Summary: An anthology of stories set in The Last of Us universe. Updated erratically
1. The Clearing of the Clouds

**This fanfic will be not a continuous story, but rather a collection of different vignettes in the same world. Connections between each story will be loose at best, and not all may tie into the game, but we at JSE will do our best to maintain the quality for each one. With this series, we want to try our hand at writing different types of stories within the same universe. Some stories will be grim and nihilistic, while others will be more optimistic and heartwarming in tone. The writing style will shift, as well. There might be a script or poem tossed in amongst the mix. So why don't we start and see how this experiment goes?**

**We will attempt to update with at least one story per month. **

**By Jack**

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><p>The girl breathes in a silent, yet bountiful gulp of air. Her heart beats rapidly, assault rifle firing away in her chest. Beads of desperate, tensed sweat flow down her forehead. Her brown hair has been messily strewn about, strands dangling like lights hanging from the ceiling. Lights that may very well go dark, leave a house dead forever, if she doesn't play what little cards she has right. The maniac warned her that escape was futile, that this was his town she was playing in. But she still clung onto the hope that she could make it out alive. Even if it meant fighting her way out from the belly of the lion's den, through the merciless blow of an unfeeling act of nature, armed with nothing but a pocketknife and a steadily dwindling supply of revolver ammunition.<p>

She could have made it. Her hopes had swelled to astronomical proportions, anxious as it was, as she had made her way through the town. As she trudged her way through the insurmountable gauntlet, eluding or dispatching the devil-men who sought warm veins and flesh to chew, the girl had focused on hope to push her through the challenges. To prevent herself from curling up and waiting for the monsters to come to her as she so easily could have done in her many, yet few years of life. So many times she could have done so. Curl up and die when her best friend was taken from her mere weeks before she began on this life-changing journey with the man. Curl up and die when the man had injured himself and she didn't know what to do. But she never did, despite all the chances she had at taking the easy way off this unkind, dark world. Hope to see the man, closest thing she ever had to a father, again. Hope to reach the fabled light at the end of the tunnel, the yellowjacketed guerillas spoken of in hushed whispers in the caged cities. Hope that all they had been through, everything she had done, would not be for nothing.

But her hopes nearly shattered, precariously teetering on the edge of the skyscraper over a sea of nothingness, when she had reached for the door that led out of the restaurant. The maniac had somehow found her, and he had knocked her gun away from her grasp. She had managed to fight her way out of his lecherous hands, but she knew that there was no chance of escaping. The disturbed journey that she and the maniac had taken since they first locked eyes in that wintry expanse would end here. But it wouldn't be easy. He was armed and much more experienced than her. Like her protector the man, he knew everything he was doing. Perhaps even better. All she had was a mere pocketknife now. And to compound matters, the maniac had set the restaurant ablaze. Dawdle too long, and the flames would consume them both.

Two times she had done it already, sneak up on him and plunge her blade deep into his flesh. Plunged it in as deep as she could. She knew that the second stab should have killed him. But the maniac showed no signs of relent, no weakening. With a sickening chill running along her shivering spine, she knew that like her, the maniac was driven by hopes. Hopes that held no pleasantness, only despair, for her. How many times will they have to play this sick game, cat and mouse, before one of them keels over? She creeps around the abandoned diner, carefully navigating over broken dishes lest she give herself away. He's started to hide, hoping to catch her by surprise, knowing that his loud footsteps give his location away. Hoping that she'll fall of the edge, lose herself to fear and pressure.

He taunts her, sounding more and more deranged with each falling grain of sand. The girl remembers that she bit the maniac earlier. Could the infection be spreading through his veins, consuming cells, as he stalks her right now? Run, little rabbit, run! He calls out from somewhere in the dinner. She leans against one of the dining booths, focusing her ears. She creeps slowly, past fallen bottles and decayed relics of an abandoned world. Her breath is cold, still in the burning world. She nears the kitchen. The girl cautiously crouches against the outside wall, peeking over one of the windows so delicately narrow in her manner. As she suspected, the maniac is crouched behind one of the grills, machete firmly gripped. He's cooing for her to come to him, to give up in exchange for an easy release.

She waits until his head is turned the other direction. The girl rounds the corner, into the heart of the lion's den. The maniac's back is to her. Maybe she's only imagining things, or is the lunatic giggling now. Taking one final desperate breath, she lunges and plunges her pocketknife into the front of his shoulder. He moans in agony, but to her horror he's choosing to go down like a bull. With ferocious strength, even with the blood dribbling down the tears and holes her blade has left in him, he tussles about while she grips him, trying to pull her knife all the way to his twisted heart. She gasps as he stumbles back and slams her against the edge of a table. Her spine feels as if it shall crack in two. For a few more tormenting seconds, as her body convulses with the pain of the impact, the maniac finally succeeds in breaking her grasp and he slams her down to the ground. Before he himself collapses, wounds taking effect at long last.

The world goes dark. All is quiet in the diner except for the gentle rustle of falling snow and the growling hunger of the widening pyre. The two bodies, the girl and the maniac, lie still. Unaware of the calamity that is brewing in the world around them. The screaming women, frantically ferrying their cannibal next-of-kin to shelter. The cries of the dying as the bullet of a rifle flies through their eye or as a hatchet presses deep into their throat. The man has awoken from his sleep. He comes for the girl. And he won't let anyone take his precious little girl from him ever again.

When the girl wakes, she doesn't know how long she has been out. All she is aware of is the dim glow of the intense fire a mere walk from where she is. The faint dash of white snow falling down onto her bare forehead. She doesn't know where the maniac has gone, or if he is even still alive. But she knows that it is only a matter of time before the flames consume what is left of the diner, and an even quicker matter when the remainder of the maniac's clan spot the flames and piece together the puzzle. It will be no easy solution to this logarithm, getting out of this snow-covered hell. Even as she pushes herself over, onto her knees, the slightest movement feels as if it needs the strength to climb mountains. In a brief glint, the girl sees fallen in front of her the machete. Could it be? Is her tormentor at last gone to meet whatever lies beyond? Groaning, the girl gathers all the strength she has. Fire fuels her muscles as she pushes herself slowly but surely to the blade. The girl crawls determinedly, ignoring the wailing cries in her joints with each inch she makes. She breathes heavily, grateful for each gulp of oxygen that rushes into her lungs. Each second that she remains alive.

Without looking, she can hear the footsteps approaching. Sharply tuned, the girl instantly distinguishes the footfalls of the enemy from friend. She's still too weakened from their earlier battle to do anything in time to stop the grunt of her tormentor as he drives as he drives the hard tip of his boot into her weakened body. Crying lightly, she falls flat to the ground. He laughs lightly.

I knew you had heart.  
>Y'know, it's okay to give up.<br>Ain't no shame in it.

The girl, both frightened and angered by his words, does not reply. The maniac doesn't deserve her time, the pathetic, cruel motherfucker he is. With mere seconds to catch her breath, fighting against a body that wishes to comply with his words, the girl pushes herself up and continues making her way forward.

With another laugh that almost sounds like acceptance, he speaks again. I guess not. Just not your style, is it? He kicks her again, this time in the ribs. Despite her attempt not to, she cries out lightly as the pain spasms throughout her entire feeling. The maniac must enjoy this. And before the horror can dawn upon her, the maniac is moving over her, bending his knees. He wants to make her see the futility of further defying him. He clamps strong hands, surging with raw strength, onto her.

You can try beggin'. He says to her, almost fatherly in his way of dispensing advice.  
>Fuck you. She may die, but she won't give him the satisfaction.<br>He angrily pushes her over, their eyes locked. His hands move to her neck, slowly adding more squeeze with each second that passes. To her revulsion, she feels another part of the maniac touching her. No, not just touching. Something wicked and ghastly pressing hard, throbbing, against her thigh. The hate in his voice is coarse and weighty.  
>You think you know me?<br>Huh?

Blindly, she flails her hand behind her. Trying to grasp the machete or anything that she can use to defend herself. Even as his hands start to tighten, she swears not to abandon hope.

Well, let me tell you somethin'

You have no idea what I'm capable of.

She finds it harder to breathe. The thing pressing against her is pulsing rapider, firmer as the maniac exerts more of his weight onto her. The girl feels cells in her brain go pop as the maniac squeezes the life from her. Her hand continues to grab around wildly. Is this it? As tears blind her eyes, the world around her loses color. In flashes, she reflects in mid-seconds. Escaping from Boston. Making her way through the deathtrap metropolis with the man. The tragic loss of their comrades after their final victory over the hunters from Pittsburgh. The dam, confronting the man about his past. Finally breaching the man's self-imposed wall, the two of them determined to find the Fireflies.

After all she has been through, it can't be for nothing.

As the strangulation reaches its climax, the girl feels light return to her eyes dimly as her fingers feel the firm grip of a round handle. Wrapping her hand upon it, the maniac is so distracted by his desire to play his twisted games that he does not see her lift it from the tile and swing it. The pendulum reversed, hourglass stalled, the girl is now on top as she lifts the machete in the high. He screams in terror, opening his mouth as if to beg for mercy. But the girl does not see him, for her eyes are closed, and as she brings the machete down there is no screaming to be heard.

Just the sound of flesh punctured by metal, the cracking of bones like the falling of skyscrapers and the mutilation of human complexion no different from the destruction of rotten fruit. Emotions overpower her. She blindly swings away, unaware that the maniac is long departed the realm of living. Blood stains her face, tears dribble from her closed eyes. She doesn't hear the footsteps approaching her. The man crying out. Ellie!

Stop, stop! He begs her.

The machete clatters as it falls from her grasp. She doesn't recognize his voice, nor the feel of his touch. In her emotionally-fueled terror, she mistakes him as another one of the maniacs that have overrun this asylum.

No! Don't fucking touch me! She screams at the man as she tries to break out of his hold. But he doesn't let her go.

Ssh. Ssh. He reassures her. It's okay. It's me.

Look.

Look.

Her eyes pointing downward, she starts to recognize the warmth of a fatherly figure as his welcoming hands warm her frozen, hardened cheek.

It's me.

She starts to tell him about the maniac, sobbing. He tried to

He hugs her, holding her against his chest as she cries. Oh baby girl, it's okay. It's okay.

Joel… she calls to him as he comforts her.

It's okay now.

At last, she opens her eyes. Staring not into the face of the maniac, but into the visage of the man. He whispers words of comfort, wiping away the blood and tears. He lifts her up, holding her closely to him. The two of them walk away, leaving behind a bloodstained machete embedded into the floor and the nigh-unrecognizable form of a carcass that was once human. Feelings carry them through this frozen hell, towards fleeting safety and the warmth of spring. Love, friendship, and a hope in hell.

The shepherd has reclaimed his lost lamb and he will never let her go again.

No matter what happens to them on the road ahead, the perils that they face and the hardships they endure, the man's promise is strengthened to unbreakable armor. He promises for himself. For the girl he is holding across the shoulder right now as they walk unwaveringly through blinding winds and chilling snowfall. And a final promise to the memory of her.

That he will never lose her again, never let go no matter what it will force him to do to the world that stole his lamb from him. The answer to him is clear, no more doubts about surviving in this cruel dark world. He has something to fight for until the day the world finally comes for him. On that day, where the red sun sets and the luminous full moon rises, there shall be the nightcalls of night birds and the rustling of water as fish swim downstream. Where he rides away with the sunset, never to look back. Where he ends up, he will erect a house. A safe house, with the amenities of a world eons ago reduced to specks to dust. The world where no infected, no bandits, no Gods, no masters walk. A world for him and his lambs. But until that day comes, the man shall live in this world as best he can.

They leave Lakeside behind, the silent hell left to eat away at itself. They have nothing but the road ahead to look forward to. And they continue to walk down that road, the man and the girl, despite all it has ripped from and thrown at them.

They may be the last of us in a world where savagery and selfishness have consumed all that was once pure, where inhuman monsters click and bloat in the darkness. Where authority has become a twisted, corrupted mirror of itself. But this is also a world where peace and beauty can still be found, where the precious few still fight to preserve and restore what once was. Where even the smallest moments of splendor are worth defying the reaper's scythe for just one more day.

It can't be for nothing.


	2. Factions

The title of this story and its plot were loosely inspired by TLOU's multiplayer mode "Factions." It's probably the longest thing I've written in a long while and it was a pain to write, since none of the characters and locations (unless you count infected) were available in the game to base my writing off of. Don't worry, Joel and Ellie will be back soon in another story in this collection. To be honest, I'm not too pleased with how it ultimately turned out, especially the ending. But who knows? Maybe you'll think different.

By Kaiser Caesar

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><p>"This was a fucking mistake." The driver of the armored truck muttered as the vehicle rumbled through the cracked road, navigating around rows and rows of abandoned cars. A cigarette chomped between his lips, he briefly drove one-handed as he coughed out some smoke. An unevenly shaved beard dotted his face, and his red-lined eyes were hidden by a pair of dirt-encrusted shades. His side-driver was younger, blonde-hair tied in a ponytail. She checked over the ammunition in her rifle. The military convoy had run into some trouble on the supply run. Only five rounds left, but she wasn't too worried. She was of the generation born after Day Zero, the generation who had grown up in the Quarantine Zone and trained from the second they could walk to pick up a gun and shoot. The military school had prepared her for situations like this.<p>

"You think? We got the crap they sent us to get and a bonus back there as well."

"And was it worth losin 'bout five of our best guys to get it? Three of 'em, was my friends from before the fucking pandemic. And now they're dead, and in exchange we get some shit veggies and that uncooperative bastard back there."

"It's still food, isn't it?"

"Yeah, foods for an ungrateful fucking civvie pop back in the QZ." The driver shook his head. "We kept 'em safe from all the infected and stragglers, and what do they do? They fucking riot 'cause we do our best to keep 'em fed for years, they riot cause we take the measures to prevent another outbreak! Thankless fucks don't understand the sacrifices we made with the uniform, they just think about themselves. If it was up to me, I'd have 'em all fire-lined and empty the city for ourselves, we soldiers who deserve fucking San Fran."

"But nothing but drivin's up to you, is it, Sgt. Ronnie?"

"Yeah… before the outbreak I was nothing but a shit cabbie in the city. And now, even with the end of the world, I'm still nothing better than a pissant driver. You're lucky, Kate. This world's all ya know. But me… sometimes I still get nightmares dreamin' about the good 'ol days."

"Hmm.." She thought and shouted at the soldiers in the back. "Hey Stu, The Firefly talk yet?"

"Oh, he's been talking, Kate!" Stewart shouted back. "Just nothing we wanna hear! Hit him again, Pvt. Jordan."

"Um… sure, sir." The sound of a fist hitting flesh. Their prisoner coughed up something, most likely vomit or blood. At end of the line before the truck turned back, they had been attacked by the Fireflies. There the five men had been shot up bad. Fireflies got fought off, and they took one of 'em prisoner for a round of interrogation before they cut his throat and dumped him off in the road. "Now talk. Please? We don't have all day…"

"Sure…" The Firefly's tongue pushed out a loose tooth, clattering on the floor of the truck as it landed. "An anemone or clematis plant's juice can cause a rash. When pruning them, it's a good idea to wear gloves"

"Aw, not this fuckin' shit again." Stewart muttered and pushed Pvt. Jordan aside. Without warning, he kicked the Firefly in the groin, knocking the tied prisoner's chair over. "We are all fucking tired of your nonsense. Now tell us where your goddamn armories are!"

The Firefly, despite the clear pain in his face, continued to mock his captors. "I'm not squealing to any pigs. But go ahead… do whatever you like. I may die, but it doesn't matter. You know why? You didn't kill everyone back there. And y'know… we had a radio that kept us in contact with the other squads in the state. Squads better armed than us and with even more beef to settle with ya pigs…"

"Corporal Simon, want to take a crack?" Stewart called to the last passenger, a helmeted soldier in body armor who looked over his assault rifle with a glazed, bored look.

"Can I waterboard?"

"No. Can't afford to waste that H2O!"

"Got the wrench?"

"Yeah. Toss him it, Pvt. Jordan."

"That'll do." And the sound of metal hitting flesh filled the truck's interior. The Firefly kept laughing, although with each passing second his laughter sounded more like screams.

"I can't wait to shoot him…" Kate muttered.

"You're just a private, kid. Stewart's the highest ranking bitch here and he's gonna decide how we off him." Gardner reminded her. "If it were up to me persay, though, I say we oughtta tie him to the bumper and drive him along till he dies."

* * *

><p>In the time before the Cordyceps pandemic, this town was called Half Moon Bay. A seaside settlement, with decent stretches of beach and more than just a few fine eateries. But the tourists, fishermen, and surfers dried out when the infection made its way to the Pacific coast. Along with much of the coastal dwellings, the town was flooded by desperate survivors in the confused chaos trying to make their way to the boats. In hopes of sailing to find impossible nirvana, a place where infection could not reach. The massive fighting died down when the military finally rolled in to quarantine the town. The boats since then have either sunk or rusted beyond use, the fuel siphoned by various stragglers wandering through for their land vehicles.<p>

On the run, forced out of the San Francisco quarantine zone by a relentless military fist, the Fireflies of that city split into groups that spread throughout Northern California. One such crew settled in the remains of Half Moon Bay, long abandoned by all except the dead and gone-in-mind. The infected in the parts of the town which they used had been cleared out, although spores still clouded many interiors, and the Fireflies were always sure to exert caution when exploring the unchecked outskirts. But in the time that they had been there, the Fireflies had managed to fortify the parts of town that they owned without question. And as more and more supplies found their way into Firefly storage, many bandits learned to avoid the town… from word of mouth or the hard way.

The Fireflies of the Bay had kept in touch with the other bands roaming throughout the state via radio sporadically. And recently, they had received a transmission from another Firefly group.

bzzt "…got jumped by military… killed half of 'em but they shot up Ronson, Cindy… bzzt… and nabbed Lt. Ross. He knows where a lot of us are bunkered out and he might've cracked bzzt… think they're heading your way…" The rest of the transmission was static but the leader of the Half Moon Bay Fireflies had heard enough to know what his next course of action was. Reaching for a dull green beret and a pair of aviators, he slid the hat over a head of oily, uncombed black hair and pushed the glasses down a slightly crumpled nose. His uniform with adorned with makeshift badges, trophies plucked from dead soldiers , stragglers and infected he had slain.

He poured himself a small shot of tequila, of which there was only one and a half good bottles left. The other Fireflies, sitting at the same table hunkered around the radio, looked at him like students waiting for the next instruction. Aside from him, there were six others in the makeshift dining room, of which was located in the ruins of a real-estate office. Eleven more Fireflies were patrolling the town, looking for stragglers and infected.

"What are we going to do, Jack?" An Asian, bald and eyelashes outgrown, broke the silence.

"Isn't it obvious?" Jack replied. "Hit the armory and inspect our traps. We all lost a buddy fleeing from SF to those pigs, and it's about time we gave them a little something back."

* * *

><p>"Alright… alright… hold still, ya hornless shit..." The bandit stalked the deer through the forest, following the doe until she stopped to take a drink from a brook. Finger tight against a rifle trigger, his foul-tainted breath stilled, the bandit put down one pound too much into his next step. And as the crunching of leaves filled the tree-lined area, the deer whirled its head around and saw him with the rifle. In seconds it was bounding off, too fast for him to catch up. In anger, the bandit tossed down his rifle and began to irately hop down and down on it repeatedly.<p>

"GOD-FUCKING DAMMIT, GOD FUCKING DAMMIT, BAMBI! I'LL FUCKING GET YOU AND SODOMIZE YOU WITH THE TIP OF THIS RIFLE BEFORE GOD-FUCKING-BLOWING YOUR SHIT INSIDES TO DEATH! FUCK FUCK FUCK! ALL THAT FUCKING WORK SWEATIN DOWN MY NECK FOLLOWING FUCKING BAMBI FOR NOTHING! FUCK THIS BROKEN SHIT!"

"Cool it, Cuchillo." A calmer voice of rationality. "You wanna break that rifle when it took us years in the ass to get one that good or attract fuckin' mushy-heads with that racket?"

"Well, ex-cuse me, Danny-boy, but some of us in the crew dog shit tired of eatin' fuckin gulls and fishies. We want some real meat… fulla bloody veins and shit we can chew! And that meat just fuckin' ran from me cause it hears too damn well!"

"Calm down nonetheless, beaner-boy." Danny admonished him. "These woods are packed full of deer. You get another shot at meat down the line eventually."

"Christ… I just miss those cheeseburgers so fucking much…" Cuchillo muttered. "And now… ground Bambi seems just as tasty as ground beef…"

"Hey boys, take a look at this!" The token female and black of the bandits, Bianca, shouted at them somewhere from up the trail. The two bandits, slinging their weapons around their shoulders, ran following her voice.

"What is it, B?" Danny asked.

"Check it out." She handed him a pair of binoculars.

"Oh my god…" Danny mumbled.

"Geez, Danny-boy, what is it? Your momma humping a bloater?" Cuchillo muttered. Danny ignored the remark and handed him the binoculars. Cuchillo took a quick peek. Coming down the highway in the distance was a military truck. Cuchillo hadn't seen any of these since the Quarantine Zones closed themselves to all outsiders.

"Where it heading, B?"

"Half-Moon!"

"Hah, idiots! Don't they know that a nest of stingers?" Cuchillo laughed.

"Say… that gives me a good idea…" Danny said. "We always on the move and we could use some stuff to keep us happy while on the move… them military dudes don't go outside of their fancy walls often. But whenever they do, they bound ta be carryin stuff with them. And maybe stuff in that stuff."

"What? Don't tell me you actually thinkin' of going against blackies and yellows at once! They got those fuckin' video game rapid-fire machine guns and who knows what else? Us, a buncha rusty pistols and single-shot rifles!" Bianca objected.

"Well… I see two ways we can take out both black and yellow and then take their stuff so we can live like kings till the day we croak. We can either be patient and wait for one o'em to kill the other, and swoop in the finish 'em off."

"Borin!" Bianca objected again. "I can't sit this long! I've gone three months without killin' another human bean and I need my blood!"

"Or we can do this the dumb way."

"What's the dumb way?"

"You'll see. Let's make our way back to Tap and the ride. I bet there's a pack of wild clickers just waitin' to be found and itchin' for a bit of exercise round these parts."

* * *

><p>"Town coming up in a few miles." Stewart, now in shotgun and looking at a faded highway map, commented. "Better drive slow and careful, Sarge."<p>

"Why the hell should I? So anythin' vicious there hiding can have all their darn good time to get to us? Nah, I think I'll just plough through that goddamn wreck like Satan's coffee machine!" Gardner then cursed as he hacked out some more cigarette smoke.

"Jesus, Ronnie. What if you drive over landmine?"

Ronnie laughed. "At worst, we'll find some half-naked cannibals waiting for us there. You think they'd have access to landmines. Get real, Stewie!"

Meanwhile, in the back, Cpl. Simon had finished his business with the captive Firefly. A large brown bag with a single slit that passed for an airhole had been placed over his head. The Firefly was breathing still, but at last silent. They had given up on retrieving any sort of information relevant from him. Simon had retreated into a deep nap. The two privates stared at each other from opposite sides of the truck.

"Hey, Kate… about that night…" Pvt. Jordan started somewhat nervously. "We haven't seen each other much since until we got stuck together on this truck… but y'know…"

"Know about what? We were idiot kids and we got drunk. End of story."

"No, it's not the end, Kate."

"Alright, so you didn't use any contraception and it happened to be that time of the month for me. And unless that stick thing was defective…"

"What will we do? You know what the stances of the big bosses on pregnancy are!"

"We, Alex? What a pleasant surprise. And here I was, thinking that you were a runner." Kate rolled her eyes.

"Shit, Kate, you are never going to give me a freebie for that, are ya? Listen… I regret cracking like that but shit… it was the first time I ever saw one of those things in person! Not all of us can keep up the brave knight in shining armor routine when faced with certain death… I swear, back then… I thought it was the end. That I'd be infected, slowly lose my mind bit by bit until I was nothing more than an empty shell… crap, can't believe I'm saying this but…"

"No buts, Alex. You think I'm not scared either? My older sister caught it in the QZ… they got my dad to pull the trigger but he suffered a breakdown after doing it. They had to restrain him or else he would've blown the rest of the family to kingdom come. Ever since that day, I've known that our death can happen at any time, by anything… but listen to me Alex, shit happens and we just have to adapt. Because you can let the world fuck you or you fuck the world. And the two of us… we'd make a fine pair of world-fuckers." She stepped over and sat by his side, putting his hand in her's.

"Alright, Kate. But what about the baby?" Alex Jordan said, his voice worried about possibilities and now a whisper. "At best, they'll take it away from us and have us court-martialed for misconduct… but you know how we're running out of everything in the QZ. I can't bring myself to think about what I know they'll do…"

"Then don't. Wanna know how to stop being scared? Focus your mind on other things."

"I don't want to have to kill my own kid. But if you want to go that way… I don't know. We aren't so flirty or huggy now… but once upon a time ago, I cared 'bout you more than anything else. If that's what you wish…"

"I'm not getting an abortion, even if it's a true asshole move of us to bring a kid into a world like this. And I'm not letting the higher-ups take our child from us. I'll stay together for you"

"I know a couple of smugglers who know the rooftop and underground systems well. I can bribe a few of our fellow guys who man the depositories… in exchange for the right firepower, they'd smuggle us out…"

"Good to know you finally are the man with a plan." She kissed him on the cheek. "Hey, we'll talk about this later, when we get back to SF, alright?"

"Okay. Love you always, Kate."

"I know."

The two leaned forward to kiss on the lips, but settled for an awkward hug instead.

* * *

><p>When the world had ended, many survivors had tried to hunker down here in the mobile park. But all it took to bring that dream crashing down were a few spores. More had come after the initial disaster, adding to the ranks of the dead and the diseased. Moans of the freshly turned… crazed giggling of those who had been infected for far longer, and the clicks and growls of those who had become bloated, human bodies warped beyond recognition by fungi. And all four kinds of dead men walking perked up as they heard the roar of the truck engine. Insane hordes squirmed out from the abandoned trailers, from underground passageways, from derelict restaurants and burnt-out gas stations. Screeches filled the air as they chased after the moving vehicle. The passengers in the back of the truck hollered and hooted as they fired their weapons at the horde. Normally, they'd be pissing themselves dry but the cocaine and the alcohol downed moments before had altered the senses.<p>

"Man, oh, man! Double-friggin-headshot! Two-for-one special!" Danny laughed as he fired off his loud revolvers. "Boom! I tol' you this was gonna be the dumbest thing we ever did!" As he kicked away a stalker that tried to leap onto the back of the truck.

"Yeah, but who the hell cares, D-man?" Bianca wildly laughed as she hurled a nail bomb into the herd of infected. Infected blew into red bits, but more trampled over the dead. "We real badasses here! How 'bout you, Cuchillo? How many points you score?"

"I'd score some if that fucker Tap kept this thing steady!" Cuchillo's eye peered into his rifle's scope, missing three shots in a row. "Hey fuck-name, slow this hunk of shit down a bit, will ya?"

"Those soldier boys and Fireflies ought to be carving each other up right now! You wanted some human targets as well, remember? Gotta get there hot n fast, thirty minutes or else we gone get none."

"Aw, shucks. Fine, then. But you owe me a high score, Tappy! Me bottom from top later 'night, remember!" Cuchillo roared. "Yo, Danny-boy, tell me why we was shooting them again in the first place? 'dis ammo wasn't easy to come by, ya remember or not?"

"Cause we got guns and they targets that want our meat. What else we gonna do?"

"WOOO!" All four of the bandits screamed with joy as they barreled down the dead highway in their ride, a thinning herd of infected chasing after them. They were lunatics, and the world had become their open asylum. They were having the time of their lives

* * *

><p>The Fireflies had properly equipped themselves for the battle to come. All were clad in helmets and body armor, weapons strung around their bodies. There was a gun for every situation. Sniper rifles of which to take out a man's head through the air from all the way across town. Shotguns to blast bodies to bits with shrapnel up close and personal. Semi-automatic rifles, fit for all seasons. Even a goddamn flamethrower, to make pork BBQ out of these army pigs. A bounty of supplies of which to craft improvised weaponry as deadly as the professional deal.<p>

Jack smiled as he spun his revolver in his hands before holstering it.

"Have all the traps been set?"

"Sir, yes, sir!"

"Those goons think that this will be a routine town devoid of life when they see it. But to their displeasure, they will see that our candle light is burning strong. And with our flames, we shall construct a fiery grave for them."

"Aye!"

"For the world that was! For the shattering of the fist of FEDRA oppression! For the memory of our slain leaders and comrades! For the Fireflies!"

"For the Fireflies!" They echoed.

"Good to see you are all enthusiastic about our boar hunt. Now, let's get into position. Remember your parts and play them well!"

* * *

><p>Pvt. Jordan was now leaning over, his head falling on Kate's shoulder.<p>

"You ever have doubts about killing them? Not bandits or clickers, I mean… the Fireflies."

"Not really. Orders are orders. They try to kill us so we try to kill them."

"The people don't think the same way. Have you ever listened to their chants during the riots?"

"Before we bring in the gas and the tanks for shock and awe? Of course they love the Fireflies. Fireflies understand the principle of bread and circuses better than we do. But honestly, if the people opened their eyes a bit, they'd see the Fireflies are capable of just as much bad shit as us girls and boys in uniform."

"Maybe. But you know… about that other thing… if we are going to succeed, we're going to have to screw the rules for ourselves."

"Oh, I know that. But until then, let's play the parts the playwright has written us, shall we?" She kissed him on the cheek.

"Fine, Kate." Pvt. Jordan said halfheartedly. Two of his brothers, Alan and Scott, had joined the Fireflies and had gotten their brains splattered against the wall or publicly hung as a reward for their efforts. They were enemy but family was family. Pvt. Jordan had his morals but it was a compass that kept swaying and swaying until it would eventually fall still. He didn't know what to think anymore, the less and less he paid attention to what he had been taught at the military school and more and more to what he had experienced in person.

"And as I said…" Sgt. Ronnie up front. "I'm transitioning to a speed demon and there's no goddamn crap you can do to make me stop!"

"Fine, Ricky." Stewart sighed. "But you will be court-martialed for disobeying a superior's order and I'll see to it that you are flogged, mark my words."

"Oh, I'm so scared of your words!" Ronnie chortled as he stepped on the gas, pushing the truck forward. The sudden jolt sent Kate flying on top of Alex, knocking Simon awake upon which he instinctively loaded his rifle and jabbed it around, and guided the Firefly face first causing him to groan. Ronnie's laughter, mirthful as it was, was suddenly cut short.

The sound of glass breaking.

Stewart's face splattered with blood as the bullet entered Ronnie's eye and came out on the other side. Then the sound from outside of a wheel being popped by another bullet and the vehicle wildly beginning to swerve. Stewart was knocked back by the jerk, his body colliding against the door. Head hit the window so hard it cracked. Pushing past the throbbing headache in his back, ignoring the surprised screams in the back, he forced Ronnie's corpse from the driver's seat and put his hands on the wheel. Fighting to gain control, he could hear people starting to riddle the truck's armored exterior with bullets. Armor-piercing, good god. They were fighting a very pissed hive of Fireflies.

He had just about gotten it steady when the sound of something very massive rumbling down a hill was heard. It crashed into the truck, sending all inside flying and crashing.

* * *

><p>"Shitshitshitshitshitkeepcalmrememberwhatshesaid" Jordan stammered as he dragged the barely conscious Kate from the wreckage. Simon and Stewart had already gotten out, and God help them if the two higher-rankers had been offed by their attackers. "thinkhappierthoughtslikehowgooditllbetosmashinoneofthosefuckersheadswithhisowngunohgodohgod"<p>

Their prisoner was dead at last, impaled through by pipe that had made its way into the wreckage. Kate muttered something as he put her onto his shoulders. He limped his way from the wrecked truck to the outside, where Simon and Stewart had taken cover. Stewart had taken out his radio and was barking into it.

"ugh… giv…un…" She muttered, some blood dribbling from the corner of her mouth as she talked.

"What?"

"A gun, asshole!"

"Sure, sure." He rested her a brick wall, handing her a revolver.

"Good boy, Alex." She panted.

"Are you ok?"

"Shaken, stirred, but not broken." She smiled. The two turned their attention to Stewart.

"This is Major William S. Stewart, FEDRA Search Unit Nine-Five-Nine. We have been ambushed by Fireflies on routine supply run! Repeat, we have been ambushed by Fireflies! Sergeant Richard Gardner is dead, one of the privates appears wounded! Asking for back-" A sniper shot destroyed the radio, sending bits of shrapnel into Stewart's face. Stewart cursed and wiped much of the shards from his face.

"We're on our own, aren't we?" Simon asked, scanning the area with a rifle scope muttering: "Come out and die, fucking yellowjackets…"

"Afraid we are." Stewart said, checking his ammo. "But it was an honor leading this squadron, and it shall be an honor going out wit"

"Cut the motivational speech, alright?" Alex shouted at him. "Let's just get this over with, shall we?"

His eye caught a female Firefly, short and pale-skinned, with a sniper rifle scurrying from some cover to a high vantage point in the distance.

"Firefly, over there! She's got a military-grade sniper on her!"

"No problem. It's a matter of point and click." Simon commented. With a burst, they heard a scream and Jordan fleetingly saw the Firefly's body tumble down a flight of stairs. But no sooner had the Firefly fallen had another taken a shot at them. Simon ducked back behind the cover as the bullet dispelled some of the shelter. The bastard was using a suppressed rifle, making it difficult to pinpoint the Firefly's location.

"They've got us pinned down." Stewart remarked grimly. "And we don't know how many of them there are."

"I can try to sneak and take some of 'em out quietly." Pvt. Jordan offered. He was scared to shit right now, and he was surprised he hadn't pissed himself yet. He knew that his offer was suicidal, but still, so was remaining in this wreckage to wait for his death to come. As everyone had egged him on so often, it was time to man up. And come to death himself. But he would not die for military, he had no love for the uniform that had dictated his life since his childhood at the military school. For if he should pass, so be it. But she would live. For even though he knew nothing to confirm it, Alex Jordan felt deep down that he had sired one and that the mother ought to live.

"Go ahead."

"Let me wingwoman for him." Kate muttered as she peeked over the wall. Instantly, Fireflies were shouting and firing. She ducked her head back down.

"Private Rayner, you aren't in top shape. Stay back and cover him!" Stewart shouted as a Firefly with a molotov cocktail rushed at them. Stewart fired with his 10mm at the bottle, and the Firefly was consumed in a shower of flames.

"But-"

"No buts, Private! That's an order!"

"You know what? Fuck you and your orders! This is a matter of life and death, and for your information, I'd rather take the path I think leads away from the lit-tunnel. He's gonna need a buddy to watch his ass."

"Fine, then. But I will see to it that both of you are court-martialed and"

"Yeah, yeah, flogged in public. Just toss us something and we'll be on our way, okay?" Pvt. Jordan irritably said. Stewart tossed him a canister of tear gas and some spare ammo. The two privates unsheathed their small knives, silent but deadly.

"The one time we don't take the suppressed weapons with us…" The private muttered and he was off. They crawled to their knees, crouching, and the two privates made their way deeper into the Firefly nest, using various pieces of wreckage to hide their movement.

"Aw, hell… if they do make it back… I'll need an entire tavern to myself…" Stewart rubbed his head as he pressed against the wall. The Fireflies were starting to amass against their position. A bullet whizzed over his head, taking out some hair. Simon fired again and they heard another scream. Two more shots followed, and two more Fireflies were heard screaming their death cries. A Molotov cocktail whizzed over their heads, thank God overshooting in its arc. They had already taken down four, five, six maybe, but they could still hear them coming. Bullets were being fired at them. Soon enough they would be flanked, or maybe their cover destroyed. How many bastards in yellow were there?

Grimly, Stewart and Simon held their ground.

"Keep 'em focused on us, Simon. Let's see what the privates can do together."

* * *

><p>Private Alex Jordan waited for the Firefly to pass by him before creeping out from the bushes and delivering a quick kick to the back of her knee. Before the Firefly could react, Alex whipped out his knife and plunged it into her chest, squeezing his arm against her neck for good measure. He waited until her the blood had stopped spurting and the body had stopped kicking before hiding her body away. He looked over what was on her. No silenced gun as he had hoped, but the next best thing. Aw hell… the next best thing as long as he knew how to use this thing. Of which he had no real idea… pull pack and release…. seemed simple enough but what seemed simple wasn't always so.<p>

"How many you see from up there?" He whispered to Kate, who had made her into the ramshackle remnants of a two-floor restaurant to get a better view of the battle.

"Five dead..." She muttered. "I can see at least three from up here. They're all in cover, taking potshots at the Major and Corporal. But there's bound to be a few sneakers and snipers around here."

"How they holding up?"

"Don't seem to be dead yet. But they're staying still. C'mon, let's get a move on and take out some of the snipers for them."

Pushing past yards of overgrown weeds, up driveways of rusted hunks of metal, and through the foul-musk indoors, the two soldiers crept through the town. They avoided the main roads, for there was little present in those places to hide their movements with. The tension placed on them was high. The air was deceptively tranquil, the sound of waves hitting the beach in the distance with only the sounds of the gun battle audible in addition. Alex, in the corner of his eye, thought he saw a little flash of light like a flashlight. He quickly hushed for the two of them to hide, taking cover the welcome sign of a paint-chipped shopping center.

He focused his hearing.

"Well?"

"There's a sniper in that derelict motel right ahead of us. Second floor, third window from the left of the stairs."

"Just fired. You want to sneak over there and beat the shit out of him?"

"No. You see that bottle over there? Let's trade shit, shall we?"

"That bow? Um… I'm not…"

"Look Kate, you always were only slightly better than me when it came to accuracy. But now… slightly better makes all the difference." Alex muttered. "I'll distract him with the bottle. And when his eyes are when the bottle lands, fire the arrow. I think he's got a helmet on him but if you aim well enough you can take out an eye…"

"My pleasure."

"Good to know." And Alex tossed the bottle. Distracted, the Firefly sniper turned his attention to the source of sound. He saw nothing through his scope. Probably just another damn cat or rat. But before he could turn back to the battle in the distance, something sharp landed in his other eye. But to Alex and Kate's horror, it did not kill him instantly. The screams started, and with certainty other Fireflies would hear them. The two looked at each other and quickly began to move away from the area.

They were making good progress when Alex tripped the wire.

* * *

><p>"A pity, Benny…" Jack plucked the arrow from the still body's eye. "But least you warned us some undercover pigs were in the barn before you croaked."<p>

"Chelsea… get going and flush 'em out." He cocked his assault rifle. "We haven't got all day. I've let you tag along with me away from the cauldron till now and I don't want you to miss a piece of the action."

"Alright, Jack." Then they heard the shout. Strained anguish. Coming from north of where they were.

"What trap was that again, Chelsea?"

"As I recall, it was…"

* * *

><p>Kate, mouth agape in horror, frantically tried to recollect what had just happened. The two had been silently sneaking their way away from where they had shot the sniper when Alex had pushed open a door for them to continue. There had been only a small click but Alex had been quick pushing Kate down on the ground but he was not quick enough to get down himself. Alex, alive but at death's door, moaned through bloodied teeth as he clutched his wound. He had been shot by a shotgun which had been rigged behind the door. Had it not been for his body armor, which was mere scraps by now, he'd be dead.<p>

"Ohmigod, Alex…"

"Don't just stand there gaping, Kate. My pack… got some painkillers and bandages in there…" Kate moved him slightly, causing him to cry out slightly. "Ignore me..."

She fumbled around in his backpack. She found the pills, and hastily forced a few of them into his mouth. He gritted his teeth as he swallowed them dry.

"Helping?"

"No much. But get the bandages on me." Kate nodded, and quickly began to mend his wound with what little she had to work with. When it was done, she lifted Alex to his feet.

"Can you walk on your own?"

"Yeah, think s-argh!" He slumped forward on his knees as he took a step.

"I better help you."

"No, I'll just weigh you down and get you killed."

"I'm not leaving you behind, Alex. Don't you remember what you promised me? I was going to have a baby and you'd bribe some smugglers to get us out of the QZ togeth"

She did not hear the crunching of fallen leaves behind boots approaching them. Before she could finish her sentence, Kate was cut short as the red-haired Firefly lady tackled her, knocking her revolver from her hands. The two women rolled around on the ground, hands at each other's throats.

* * *

><p>"GAH!" Simon screamed as one of the bullets hit the stump where his legs had been. But he continued to wildly fire his automatic as Major Stewart dragged him behind the wall. They had been holding out fine, although Stewart had started to get worried about the fate of the privates. Simon had reassured him that they had received the best training in the QZ from the day they were born, that they'd be fine. When he said that, the Firefly with the grenade had tossed it. Simon shielded his superior, pushing him away from the blast with a tackle. He'd gotten far away enough to not be killed as well, but not far enough to escape unscathed.<p>

"Goddamn… they better still be making prosthetics in the QZ when we get back!" Simon choked through pained grunts.

"This isn't good." Stewart muttered.

"Should've left me back there. I would have held 'em off for you."

"You did just fine holding 'em off while I got you to safety as well."

"You really won't leave a man behind, will you?"

"Not a chance in hell. Now, let's make sure that there's no more room for us there when we're done with these fuckers!"

"You said it, boss."

"Wait a second..." Stewart though he heard something coming.

"Oh God no…" The clicks… the moans… the roars… it was something that neither of them ever wished to hear in a situation as heated as this. And on top of that… someone was blasting music.

"Is that what I think it is?"

"Now there is going to be no more room in hell." Stewart muttered darkly.

* * *

><p>Kate pushed the Firefly off, staggering to her feet. She had only a few seconds to gauge her opponent. Red-hair tied back, shorter than her, and eyes with no intent in them but murder. Kate fumbled for her knife, but the Firefly was on her almost instantly. Her arm was hit so hard, the pain so shocking, that she opened up her palm and the knife flew away. She shoved the Firefly off and decked her across the lips. Blood started to dribble down the redhead's lips, but before Kate could follow up with another punch the Firefly had kicked her severely in the belly and then tackled her to the ground. The Firefly was punching her over and over again, and she could start to taste the blood in her mouth. Momentarily disorientated, she knew that she was being lifted forcibly to her feet. What she couldn't anticipate was the intense pain that erupted as the Firefly smashed her forehead against an overturned stone fountain. Kate could feel blood streaming down from the cut into her eyes, onto her lips. The Firefly lifted her head back for another smash, but Kate thrust her elbow back and struggled free in the ensuing grapple between the two. She tackled the Firefly this time, hitting her with a headbutt. With the Firefly flat on her back, Kate wrapped her head around the redheaded bitch's neck. But even as she started to squeeze, the Firefly punched her in the neck and kicked her off.<p>

With considerable distance now between the two, Kate grabbed for her sidearm. But the Firefly had the same idea. And now the two were pointing their guns at each other before either had a chance to fire off. Both of them were bleeding and pissed.

"You are dead, ya blonde cunt. Your pig pals won't be recognizing you after what we do to you."

"Before or after I set you on fire?"

"Ahem." Alex, barely conscious, was pointing his 9mm at the redhead. In his state, he'd probably miss or be unable to get enough strength to pull the trigger but the redhead slightly backed off. Two to one was never good odds. Then they heard the whistle. Kate turned her head to see a Firefly with a green beret and a pair of dark shades.

"Well, well, well. What have we got ourselves here? A little impasse, it seems." He wasn't the most imposing of figures, not even six feet and only an inch taller than Kate by her estimate, but the way the worried composure of the redhead instantly improved after he showed up he must have been one of the big shots. And deadly. He withdrew a sawn-off shotgun and pointed it at Jordan.

"Y'know… I'm hurt, both of the girls are hurt, you're the only one not hurt. Seems a shame for us to waste our bullets when we're just gonna bleed out… ventually." Pvt. Jordan mumbled half deliriously, his grip of the pistol shaking. "Why don't we just sit down and talk this over."

"Of course. Let's just hug our problems out. Fat chance, you fascist hogs."

But before they could fire, they heard the crash and the explosion in the distance. And the nightmarish sounds of infected that could follow.

* * *

><p>"WEE-OOO! We goin' real fast now!" Danny the Bandit laughed. The Fireflies scattered as the truck, roaring a mix of 80s heavy metal, plowed through them. And what the truck didn't splatter, the horde of infected tore apart. Behind them were a mix of screaming and gunfire. Danny and his crew laughed and the three of them sitting in the back of the truck fired off shots picking off several Fireflies and runners. Bianca lifted a wood 2x4, end fitted with sharp blades, and swung it against a passing Firefly. His bald head was lopped off instantly, leaving a bloody trail as it rolled away. His shotgun fell to the ground unused and forgotten in the sudden attack of infected.<p>

"OOH OOH OOH! Up yours, ya riceeating yellow dogfuckah!" Bianca whooped as she crawled onto the hood of the truck and began to do a little dance.

"Damn, man!" Cuchillo commented as he burst the brains of a clicker with his rifle, now starting to regret taking that many drugs with his buddies before they went after the clickers. "We're fucking stoned as shit, and we gone be dead as shit soon!"

The Fireflies that had been caught up in the horde did their best to fight back but the swarm was simply too large. For each infected that was downed, there was another ready to deliver the sentence of death for the unlucky Fireflies. Some Fireflies, desperate to save their comrades, killed themselves in suicide attacks with their explosives and molotovs to take out large numbers of the horde. The remaining Fireflies dropped their ground and started to flee wherever the horde wasn't.

"Woah woah woah! Them yellows are running!" Danny yelled. "Let's finish e-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" The truck suddenly swerved and the rough jerk sent Danny flying. Almost instantly, a bloater had found him. Danny futilely fired his gun repeatedly at the bloater but its rough shell of fungal growths protected it. The bloater roared and Danny's last scream was cut short as the bloater ripped his jaw off.

"Tap, man, we lost Danny! We gonna go back and pick him up." Cuchillo moaned.

"Danny's dead, idiot! And we idiots too, for ever agreeing to this stupid scheme!"

"Where's that stuff he was talking about, too? I want it now, and I want it aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" Bianca slipped and a clicker was atop her. She screamed as it ripped out her lungs with its teeth.

"Man, Tap, we gotta get out of here!" Cuchillo moaned again. "Everyone boned but us!"

"We gone get the stuff first!"

"Fine! But I call dibs on the beer!"

Tap and Cuchillo laughed. It seemed that they were invincible gods. They had survived twenty years of outbreak. They had been fired at God knows who many times, killed God knows who many people and infected alike. They had to be invincible. The shit they went through would have killed any lesser survivor by now! Cuchillo managed to climb his way on the moving truck into the shotgun seat. See? He thought. Invincible! That would've killed any moron other than me! He high-fived with Tap and shouted at the top of his lungs like a character in a movie he enjoyed as a kid: "I am invincible!" Then the truck drove over a landmine.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, Stewart and Simon checked over their ammo. Several dead infected lay at their feet already. It would not be enough for the entire horde. They had escaped the main force, and the infected were currently wandering around searching for prey. They had enough bullets in all their guns to take out maybe two more runners.<p>

"Major…" Simon mumbled. His lower body had lost all feeling. "I don't think the privates are coming back."

"I have the same feeling." Stewart said, his voice tinged with regret. "I'm sorry… to all of you." He lifted his arm. The sleeve had been torn, tooth marks apparent.

Turning to Simon.

"You know the protocol for infection."

"I do." A gunshot.

The horde heard and clicks filled the air once more.

As they rushed towards him, Simon unpinned all of his grenades.

"Hope you choke, you motherfuckers."

* * *

><p>"Jesus Christ… I've never seen that many clickers at once!" Jack gasped, his cool exterior finally broken.<p>

"Jack, let's kill these two and get out of here!" Chelsea said, her face stricken with worry, and her finger moving towards a trigger.

"You know…" Pvt. Jordan, his eyes flickering."

"Know what?" Jack yelled at him.

"We ought to call a truce right now."

"What the fuck? Hell no!" Chelsea moved to kick him but Kate pushed her away. The two females glared at each other, their trigger fingers ready.

"Even if you kill us, you'll have to get past them." Kate mocked the Fireflies. Then they heard a screech and the two Fireflies whirled around to see a clicker rushing at them. Jack fired a shot from his shotgun but the bullet only glanced off a bit of flesh. The clicker grabbed him and opened its mouth before another shot blew off its head for good. Alex sighed. It had hurt him like hell just to lift his arm and concentrate enough to accurately shoot.

"Listen to me, all three of you. We hate you, and you hate us. But I don't want to get torn apart by those animals." Alex groaned as Kate helped him up. "And four of us are better odds than just two… we can shoot each other after we the hell out of here!"

"Work with a FEDRA lackey? You serious? Jack, just let me shoot them and we'll run!"

"C'mon! We're not soldiers or Fireflies anymore… we're survivors." Alex shouted at them grimly. "And now… it's time to survive unless you want one of those things tearing out your throat." Then he turned to Kate. "We'll get out of here. I promise. For you and our child."

"Nice try. But I know your kind too well." Jack said. He motioned and Chelsea blew out his brains. Kate gasped as the father of her child "And now…"

"You bastards!" Kate moved quicker than Chelsea. She clubbed the red-head with the revolver's butt, then kicked Chelsea's own gun away. Before Jack could do anything, she kicked him in the crotch. Kate grabbed the stunned Firefly and pushed him down the slope. He rolled downwards right into the grasp of the incoming horde. Jack's screams joined the hellish symphony as stalkers and clickers tore him apart.

"You killed Jack! You dumb cunt! I'll kill y" Chelsea cried before Kate shot her in the knee. Chelsea screamed loudly, gathering the attention of the infected who weren't busying themselves on Jack. "You bitch! You bitch! You can't leave me here!"

"Of course I can. You're the one who said soldier and Firefly can't be friends, remember? Plus… you deserve to suffer for killing Alex." Kate spit on her. She ran over to Alex's corpse. Frantically, she snatched his dog tags from him. Aside from the kid on the way, these would be all that was left of him. Gave him a silent apology for not burying him, for him never being able to see what their bastard would look like. Embraced his still body as it grew cold, so that it would be warm for just one more minute. Kissed his dead cheek and shed a few tears. She grabbed his unused canister of tear gas. It wouldn't kill any of them… but it would blind the infected that could still see. She lobbed it directly into the herd of infected as they feasted upon the Fireflies.

She turned and ran. The town was packed with infected and who knows how many hostile stragglers or Fireflies out for a bit of human blood. As far as she knew, her entire squadron was dead and the car was wrecked. There was no way of escaping quickly or easily. She was on her own. But as Alex had planned for them… it was high time that she deserted them. What a pity. The military had taught her how to survive and this is how she ultimately repaid them. Kate was scared, but she couldn't concentrate on her fright. As she ran, infected on her heels, she concentrated on other things. What the future would offer, as her belly got bigger with all that was left of Alex in this world now. Had they ever truly been in love? She didn't know. Their teenage years were a confused mess. But he was a friend nonetheless and it would do their time together back in the military school no good if she let herself be caught and torn apart like the Fireflies back there. Her prospects were grim. Realistically, with the wounds she had suffered and the amount of supplies she had on her, her odds were bad. But she had to survive. What Alex and she had done together... it changed everything. Before she would've simply fired a bullet into the side of her head before the clickers could get to her, but the chess strategy had been redrawn. It wasn't the most motherly of loves, bringing a child into a world as twisted as this one, but it was not cruel as not letting her child live to begin with. So for her life, for life to be, and in memory of life that was, the former private abandoned the life she had lived until this day and fled past the ruins of the battle-scarred town.

With those thoughts on her mind, Katelyn Wolfe ran far.

The hounds of hell followed. Death was a greedy mistress, it had eaten much on this day, and its appetite had room for just one more. But despite its beckoning allure, Kate ignored it and continued to run until she had run out of breath.


	3. A Perfect Day

By Kaiser Caesar

* * *

><p>It had been days since the two of them had left Tommy's dam at Jackson, but their long-sought destination of the University still seemed so far away. It was still the crisp of fall, but they both could feel it. The cold grasp of winter was closing in. Ellie wondered aside from Fireflies, what else would greet them at the university Tommy had told them about. From what little she knew about universities, they seemed to be like mini towns where people lived to learn. Reminded her of the military school a bit. She would be sure to ask Joel about universities when they got closer to their endpoint. Were the people who lived there before the outbreak still alive? Would they have formed their own society, helped by Fireflies, like many of the people whom she had met on her journey since she left Boston? Ellie hoped that if so, those people would be welcoming like Tommy and Maria. She was getting tired of these constant bandit or hunter attacks, and she wished not to learn the full extent of just what these splinter fragments of decaying humanity had become capable of since the old world ended. And what would those Fireflies be like? She had not seen a living Firefly since Joel and Tess took her from Marlene. The only Fireflies she had known were Marlene's group and Riley. Would these Fireflies be as hospitable to her as they had?<p>

"Hey, Ellie." Joel asked her as he weaved the horse around the abandoned cars cluttering the highway. "Should be nearing the state border in about a mile."

"Good to hear that, Joel." Ellie replied. Before they had left Jackson, Ellie had become stiffened with doubts of Joel's intents. She was plagued with worry that he would leave her behind like everyone else she had cared about had, especially once Maria told her about Sarah. She then heard the rumors that Tommy would be taking over for the rest of the journey. Ellie remembered hitching one of the horses, riding from the dam through wilderness until she had reached the deserted ranch house. There she got another glimpse into the world she never knew, and she could only shake her head at how easy things were for them back then, and how they still didn't appreciate what they had. She remembered the doubts brewing to a climax until Joel finally found her.

She confronted him.

She thought that their journeys had finally split paths after he angrily told her that he knew she wasn't his daughter.

But Joel was pleasantly full of surprises.

"Joel, what have you been calling our friend here?" Ellie asked.

"Hmm…" Joel wondered. "I've been calling it Cash in my head."

"After money? Why, Joel?" Ellie asked.

"No, not that sorta cash. Johnny Cash. Country singer who died long before the world turned to shit." Joel said. "Hmph… Tommy went back home and he couldn't bother recovering even one of our records of his songs…"

"I think I oughta hear his stuff before I can agree to naming our horse something like that." Ellie said determinedly.

"The fella here seems to like you better than me, Ellie." Joel replied with a small laugh. "Remember how much longer it takes me to feed him than you? Ellie, I think you should do the honor."

"Thanks, Joel. Hmm… let me think…" Ellie wondered. Riley was the first to come to her mind. But Riley brought back painful memories… and she did not want to tell Joel about her friend who was with her the day her life changed forever just yet. Damn it, why didn't she ask Tommy before they left? Then her mind landed on something. She didn't even know what it meant to her or where it came from, but it was perfect.

"Let's call him Callus. Much better than Cash. Pretty please, Joel?"

"Uh…. sure thing, Ellie." What sort of goddamned horse name was Callus? Joel wondered. He certainly didn't agree with the assertion of its superiority over a name like Cash. He didn't want to rain on Ellie's decision right now, but when the mood was right, he would be sure to question her about it.

* * *

><p>Next to a trickling creek and a patch of trees, the duo stopped for a quick lunch. Scarce hours ago they had galloped past the border, from Wyoming into Colorado. The forests began receding a while back, as the two passed more and more stretches of flat plain. Ellie bit into a fresh apple and for Joel, he dined on a can of God-knows-how-old-this-filth-is beans. The sky was partially cloudy today, the clouds hanging low and making shapes as they floated on. Ellie threw her core into the creek and bent over it, looking to see if there were any cool things like turtles or even those gross toads she had only seen in books. Disappointed, she looked back briefly at Joel, who was looking up at the clouds. She looked back, but nothing had made the stream more interesting to look at. Not even a fish swam in its currents, only a few bizarre bugs zipping back and forth on its surface.<p>

"Whatcha doing, Joel?" Ellie joined him.

"Something we used to do as kids when we was real bored." Joel told her. "Look up at the clouds and try to see if they reminded us of anything."

"Sounds fun." Ellie said. "Hmm… that one looks like… a pterodactyl!"

"Pterodactyl, huh?" Joel gave a small smile. "Haven't heard any kids use that word in a long time. Didn't even see them carry toy dinos around in Boston."

"Well, there was an old book that a Firefly back in Boston let me look at once after I got bitten and they were making up their plans to get me out." Ellie remembered. "What about you, Joel?"

"This is probably going to fly over your head, Ellie, but I see… Batman flying his plane into the horizon." Joel sighed.

"Who the hell is Bat Man?" Ellie asked, confused but curious.

"Well, it was the title of a comic book. Like the ones we keep stumbling across that you like to read."

"So, did he turn into a giant bat and rip people open to suck out all their blood like a werewolf?" Ellie asked again. "Or did he go around beating up people with bats like those you nail clickers with?"

Joel laughed. "No, Ellie. He wasn't a were-bat or a bat-wielding maniac. He was something they called superheroes back in the day, only he didn't really have superpowers like the rest. Just a ton of money and his big brains. He had all these inventions that helped him, and they were all bat-themed like Batmobile or Bat Clicker Repellant. Dressed up like a black bat, sometimes gray or blue, and he'd beat up criminals. Fought a weird bunch of crooks, too, like a psycho clown or a felon that made all his decisions with a coin toss."

Ellie laughed hard as he told her all this. "I'm sorry Joel, but that sounds really lame. I mean, he's called a Bat Man but he can't turn into a bat, so all he can do is dress up in tights and punch people? Was it a comedy or something?"

"Sometimes, yeah, like that corny old TV show but after Sarah's birth I recall the movies getting real dark."

"Well, you did mention psycho clowns, Joel. There was another smuggler in Boston that Marlene looked at when she was planning things before she deemed him unfit. Clowns scared him more than clickers."

"Hmph." Joel grumbled. "I'd be grateful for some killer clowns after all the shit I've had to fight… so, what was this smuggler called? Tess and I worked with some shady folks, but we never came across any clown-phobes."

"I don't remember. It was something with a N. Norman or Neddy, maybe? Don't really remember. But I've been thinking about something, Joel."

"What is it, Ellie?"

"Well, we've been talking about our pasts so much recently. But what about after we find the Firefly's lab?"

"We'll figure it out when it happens, Ellie. For now, let's focus on stayin' alive and getting you to the UCE in one piece."

* * *

><p>"Hey, Joel, it's a sign." Ellie pointed out as Callus trotted through the road. There hadn't been any rough turbulence at all, not a single encounter with hostile humans or inhumans. "Hmm… Buckeye. Don't know what the hell that is, as usual."<p>

"I'll tell you on the way, Ellie. As for the town, long as it ain't a bandit or infected nest, I'll be happy."

They continued on the road.

Buckeye was a small town, smaller than any Ellie had ever seen. It was a rural town, flat land all around with a dearth of clustered suburbs.

"Hold tight to those guns of yours, Ellie. Be ready for any trouble." Joel warned as he cautiously strode Callus past barns and houses.

"Joel, look. Wires!" Ellie notified him, pointing at several nail bombs in between a pass that was in front of them. Joel dismounted, and Ellie handed him a glass bottle. Joel, with all his might, threw the bottle at the wire snapping it. The bombs did not go up in a bang as other traps had, but simply fizzled. Joel guessed that despite the traps, this place had been abandoned for a long time and the traps had been reduced in effectiveness by the elements and time. Still, they would tread a bit more carefully. Joel walked, leading Callus by the reins, while Ellie sat on the horse.

"Look, Joel. More dead people." There was a house with the door ajar. Two skeletons in decayed clothes, one outside with shattered ribs exposed by a torn dress and another who was slumped over in the door way, a gaping hole where some of his bones should've been. Joel stopped the horse, and looked inside the house. In the hands of the skeleton was a note. Joel picked it up and gazed at it.

_Last night, I caught Seyton snooping around our water supply. I demanded what he was doing it. He just shrugged, gave me that "what me do wrong" look and said, "Just checking, Colbey. It's my shift today, make sure nothin' gone wrong with it." But then I notice that three jugs of our gasoline supply have gone missing. And later in the day, I found a diary of his that he dropped. What was inside shocked me. So in case anyone finds me and wonders why I myself was snooping in his house, this is wh_ Blood splatters ended the sentence.

_Careless shit of me to leave my crap lying around like that. But thanks, Colbey, for reminding me not to do that again. Too bad you can't hear it though… a pity since you were one of the prettier ones in this clusterfuck of a haven. You wouldn't understand though. The election was going in the wrong direction. Robbie and Jonah, they're just gonna tear what we managed apart. Someday, with either of them in charge, the infected or bandits are gonna come streamin' through. But with my plan… I can make things easier to manage. Fewer mouths to feed. Those who are standing will all understand once it flies in motion. And I guess this goes in the diary since I don't want anyone else here seeing this. Hmm, now, if only I can remember which door it was I rigged the shotgun behind. Out, Ed Seyton. _

"Bill, I've said a lot of bad things 'bout you, but at least you weren't enough of a dumbass to get killed by your own traps." Joel muttered. Then he raised his voice. "I'm going to check what's inside, Ellie. Don't go running off, okay?"

"Sure thing, Joel." Ellie give him the okay sign.

Joel entered Seyton's house. He noticed a map on a table first. It was a crude sketch of Buckeye, with several locations labeled and circled in varying marker colors. Houses that belonged to survivors labeled in green. Where things such as weapons and gasoline were stored. Locations of traps labeled in red, including tentative traps yet to be placed. Next to the map was Seyton's note to himself – finish booby trapping the house's perimeter (one shotgun door won't cut it). There were numerous wires throughout the house. He followed them upstairs. Several gallons of gasoline alongside a generator. Joel examined one of the gallons. At least the bastard was decent enough to leave them some gas. Joel then checked the basement of the house. Numerous cans of preserved foods were down there. Many personal belongings scattered throughout the house, like a TV and a record player. He then looked at the map. A building with a big circle, town hall. He would check that one out yet.

"Find anything, Joel?"

"Some stuff we could use. We'll hit this place later. For now, there's something else I want to check out."

* * *

><p>"Jesus, Joel. Look at this mess. Did bandits do this?" Ellie gasped as they saw the clutter of bodies scattered around "town hall." Joel looked around, seeing the bullet holes embedded in opposite sides of the interior. He then remembered what the dead man had said about the election in his note.<p>

"No, Ellie. I think they did this to themselves."

"Why, Joel?" Ellie asked. "You think that in a situation like this, they'd do everything they could to work together and stay alive."

"Sometimes, even after the end of the world, some people just got too much ego or paranoia for a commune like this to work." Joel said.

"Jeez, you think something like this is gonna happen to Tommy's place?"

"Not a chance in hell. What these folks were doing here was nothing close to the scale of what he's attempting."

There was a foul smell emanating throughout the house. Joel walked to the end of a hallway connected to the main room where the corpses were. "Good god…" He muttered as he saw a note that looked like it was pushed out from underneath a door.

_I think I broke the bathroom's inside doorknob! Please, somebody get me out of here! _So this was where that smell was emanating from.

"Sorry, no can do." Joel said and he returned to Ellie, who was sweeping over the main room to see if there was anything they could use.

"Find anything, Ellie?"

"Some bullets."

"Well, some bullets are better than no bullets."

"Are we leaving, Joel?"

"No Ellie, it's gettin' dark. We're heading back to that other house, Ellie. Hunker down for the night and we move on at first light."

* * *

><p>After they let Callus rest in a small stable nearby, Joel pushed the skeletons out of the doorway and shut it. He kicked the shotgun trap away, watching it clatter on the ground and twirl away.<p>

"Hey Ellie, check the basement, okay? I saw some jars down there. Maybe there's somethin' down there still good for dinner."

"Alright, Joel."

Joel headed upstairs as Ellie headed downstairs. He headed to the generator, filling it full with one of the gas containers. With three tugs, the generator vibrated and as Joel flicked a nearby light switch, the house stirred to life. He headed back downstairs. There was a moderately-sized TV in front of the beaten-up couch. He flicked it on with the remote. Of course, nothing but static. But Joel noticed a DVD player and its wires scattered about. They had been on the road together for a damn long time, and Ellie did deserve a special sort of treat.

"Hey Joel, whatcha doing?" Ellie asked as she emerged from the basement carrying a jar in her hands.

"Something special for you, Ellie."

"Is it a video game?" Ellie asked.

"Um… no. But the next best thing."

"Okay."

"Say Ellie, what did you pick for dinner?"

"Hope you like strawberries, Joel…"

* * *

><p>"Mmm, tasted better than I thought they would." Joel tossed the emptied jar aside. "You full, Ellie?"<p>

"As full as I can be in a place like this." Ellie nodded. "So what are we watching?"

"Let me see…" There was a nearby crate filled with DVDs that belonged to the former residents. Joel looked over it. A varied selection, to say the least. But thank God there were no signs of _Dawn of the Wolf _anywhere. He finally found something that Ellie might like. It was a hokey old school movie, but it was dumb and fun enough that Ellie might enjoy it. "Here's a good one…"

"Really? That title doesn't give off much of an impression… Was there any of those wolf movies in that box? I kind of want to see if they're as bad as you claim them to be…"

"Um…. no. Watch and give it a chance, Ellie."

So they watched. The picture quality of the TV was bad, and the screen flickered often. But it worked, at least.

"This is a good part, Ellie. The guy has just walked into the bank… Ellie?" Joel turned his attention away from the screen. Ellie had dozed off, fast and deep asleep. A bitter memory swept over Joel of a night just like this long ago and went away just as quickly as it had come.

"Well, bed-time for you, I guess…" She sure as hell wasn't his daughter, and he had tried to remind himself of that every step along the way since he had left Boston, but he finally decided that Ellie was the chance he had to make amends for failing Sarah that night.

* * *

><p>After he carried Ellie up to a bedroom, Joel returned to the couch. He waited for the movie to finish, and then he switched off the TV.<p>

Then he noticed something. Joel headed over to the record player. Several vinyl records were stacked in a pile underneath the stool on which it was propped.

"Might as well hear a song before I tune in myself." Joel said to himself as he flipped through the pile. "Goddamn it, where's all the country shit? No Cash, no Williams, not even Nelson. You expect me to listen to a Burnt Toast or Zephyr Brigade record? No way in hell…"

At the bottom of the pile, he finally found something he could take a quick listen to. It wasn't any of his favorites, and it was a depressing three minutes forty six seconds to listen to that probably didn't even mean what he thought it did, but it was a good song nonetheless. He set the record up on its B-side, hoping he remembered exactly how to do it. His father had showed him and Tommy how to do it once when they were kids. The record started to softly play the song.

_Just a perfect day  
>Drink Sangria in the park<br>And then later  
>When it gets dark, we go home<em>

Just a perfect day  
>Feed animals in the zoo<br>Then later  
>A movie, too, and then home<p>

Oh, it's such a perfect day  
>I'm glad I spent it with you<br>Oh, such a perfect day  
>You just keep me hanging on<br>You just keep me hanging on

As the song finished its course, Joel sat for a few minutes silently in both reminiscence and contemplation.

_Just a perfect day  
>You made me forget myself<br>I thought I was  
>Someone else, someone good<em>

* * *

><p>Joel stopped in the doorway of the room where Ellie was sleeping.<p>

"Hope you thought the same about today… baby girl."

And he walked away.


	4. Water Guns

**This is a semi-continuation of the last story.**

**By Kaiser Caesar**

* * *

><p>The place, judging from the sign that they passed on the way inside, had once been a vacation resort. Ellie had wanted to just ride by, urgent to get to the university as fast as they could, but Joel insisted that they make a small search for supplies. It had been a long ride from Jackson, and they still had not reached the University. The grizzled veteran knew that despite his young ward's eagerness, they would need to be prepared for what was ahead and the road back. So with a sigh, Ellie allowed Joel to veer Callus off the concrete road and onto the dirt path. Callus had just made his first clop into the clearing of derelict guest cabins when they heard the screams.<p>

"Joel, look!"

"Shit! Take cover, Ellie!"

A dirty man, face caked with dirt and his beard mangy, burst out from a row of cabins with a magnum in a long-nailed hand screaming so loudly and high-pitched that Joel instantly guessed what was after him. The deranged croaking and moans confirmed it. Poor, dumb bastard Joel thought as he and Ellie leapt off Callus, hiding the horse behind one of the cabin walls. Screaming was only going to make it worse for him and a hell of a lot harder to escape he finished his thoughts as he pressed into cover against the cabin. Other survivors were bolting from cabin to cabin, firing wildly at their pursuers. Callus reared up but Ellie shushed him and tugged onto his reins to keep him from making too much of a racket as Joel peeked his head past the wall.

The man was firing at a pack of runners rushing him, his aim erratic and imprecise. He kept backing off as he fired, throwing his aim off even more. Joel could see in the distance ahead what looked like more dead humans, as well as a few fallen infected. He turned his eyes back to the running man. Without warning, a stalker strafed out from behind a cabin and leapt onto his back. The man went down earsplitting as the stalker clawed him. But then shotgun blasts entered the air and the death cries of infected followed. The stalker's midsection disappeared in a mist of red, sheared off by a powerful pellet. The remaining survivors battled the infected with guns and handheld weapons, even as they were swarmed.

"Jesus, Joel! It's total calamity!" Ellie whispered as she saw the carnage unfolding.

"Shh…" Joel told her. He pressed his ears against the wall, concentrating his hearing. From the sounds he got, he could estimate that both sides of the human-infected conflict were dropping rapidly. Joel heard a final screech from a stalker, followed by the sound of metal cutting flesh, and then all grew silent. Estimating that all the active infected had fallen, he decided to move at last and motioned for Ellie to follow him. "Stay behind me."

"Alright Joel." Joel tied Callus' reins to a nearby tree and the two walked towards the center of the aftershock. Three survivors were still standing, with the dead bodies of infected and comrade alike strewn about. Joel had hoped that maybe they were willing to engage in a bit of negotiation after going through hell like that, but his hopes dropped as their expressions instantly turned hostile upon seeing the two approaching them.

"What the fuck?"

"Freeloaders! Get them!" One of them in a trucker cap and padded jacket pulled out a pistol and being clicking away on the trigger, only for the sound of an empty click to come up.

"Put the gun down. Won't do you no good either how." Joel ordered him, but Trucker Cap gave him only a defiant "Fuck you, freeloader!" and charged him while popping out a pocketknife. Joel sighed and readied the shotgun, blowing Trucker Cap's head off.

"You motherfuckers better listen to him." Ellie warned.

"Aw crap… we're sorry!" One of the bandits dropped to his knees, his voice hysterical and panicked. "We didn't mean anythin' jus' overreacted, das all it was! Please don't kill us!"

"Sorry. I'm doing you a favor." Joel said as he noticed the fresh scratch marks on the beggar's arm.

"Fuck you then!" The beggar changed stances and grabbed his holstered gun. Joel's ire was instantly fired up as he saw that it was aimed towards Ellie rather than him. He slammed the butt of the shotgun against the beggar's bald head, splotches of blood staining the dirt as the man's head landed. As he stomped repeatedly on the stunned bandit, Joel felt a fury in his veins. It was a fury that he knew well, born of mixed grief and anger, one that had resurfaced since he left Boston.

"Jaysus! You monste-!" The last guy lifted his rifle but Ellie quickly threw a bottle at his face. "-MY EYES!" Clawing at his glass-laced face, the blinded bandit stumbled backwards until he tripped over an overgrown root. His neck landed on a cabin step, a swift crack as his head twisted.

"Shit Joel… what a freaking mess. Let's get out of here."

"Let's search first. Then we'll run."

"Fine, Joel."

* * *

><p>As they got back on the main road, Ellie instantly struck up a conversation with Joel.<p>

"So, back there… what was that place?"

"Infected nest, Ellie. You saw the spores in the mess hall, didn't you?" Joel replied.

"I meant before… you know, all this."

"A resort, probably. It's like a camp that people would come to with their families and stay at for a short time. They'd waste their time fishing, hiking, skiing, the list goes on."

"You ever go to one of these resorts with yours?" Ellie pried.

"I meant to, one day, in the winter when the slopes were real good… with Sarah and Tommy… but you know how that story ended." Joel answered, looking down at his watch as he said it.

"I'm sorry, Joel. You know, if…"

"No Ellie, nothing's wrong."

Ellie decided to change the topic regardless. "Find anything good back there, Joel?"

"Enough boxes of ammo and cans of soup to last us a few weeks." Joel replied. "What about you?"

"Um… well, I didn't really find any food that wasn't rotten or any boxes that weren't empty… but in one of the cabins, there were these…" Ellie reached into her backpack, and pulled out two large plastic squirt guns.

"Ellie… you know that our packs ain't infinite…" Joel said. "And I doubt squirtin' cold water is gonna be much help against infected."

"Yeah, I know. I'm not intending to lug them around with us to the university, but I thought that it would be fun… to you know, stop and have another quick bonding buddy moment, Joel. I'll get rid of them afterwards, I promise."

"You even know how these things work?" Joel asked. Incredulous… he hadn't seen any fucking water guns for two decades and judging by all the goddamn dust on the two Ellie was showing him as they rode, those had to be even older.

"Well, back in Boston when I was living at the boarding school, I had a pair just like these before Commander Dicknose took them from me and I kept trying to get back by sneaking into his office… but he'd always walk in at the last second and catch me." Ellie shook her head.

"So, you ever get your water guns back?" Joel asked as he focused on the road ahead, but simultaneously focusing his ears to find the sound of running water.

"Well… I did, but not by myself..." Ellie's voice slowed and she seemed hesitant to continue.

"It's okay if you don't want to tell me now, Ellie. Some other time, then." Joel reassured her. "So, why the sudden desire to blast me with water?"

"Hey, it's fun, isn't it? Is there a need for a deeper reason?" But judging by some of her words, and her reluctance to tell him how she got her old guns back, Joel guessed that maybe Ellie did have a deeper reason. But he wouldn't press her for them. Further inquiries could upset her, and Ellie quite reminded him of the daughter he once had. And no loving father deliberately upsets his daughter.

"Well kid, you got me there. But you know, even if these guns are just water squirtin', I don't think I'd have to heart in me to shoot you with 'em."

"Joel, just pretend you're Bill and you've just discovered me stealing from your candy stash!"

"Alright then, kid." Joel laughed.

* * *

><p>As Callus took a sip from the pond water, Joel and Ellie filled up their water guns and pumped them ready.<p>

"Ready for this, Joel?" Truth be told, he felt ridiculous. The hardened veteran of a post-pandemic world, now he was preparing to have a water gun fight with a teenage girl. But he was her escort, and if this silliness would make her happy for another day, then he might as well do it. "I'm warning you… I'm deadly with these things."

"Good to hear, Ellie, but today… Han shoots first."

"Wh-" Joel followed up his threat by unloading a stream of H20 in her face. As she laughed and wiped from water from her blinking eyes, Joel quickly sprinted for cover behind the nearest log.

"Oh, that's a dirty one, Joel!" Ellie chuckled as she scanned the area for him. "But that's the only freebie you're getting today!"

* * *

><p>"Admit it, Joel." Ellie lightly elbowed his wet shirt in the ribs. "You ran out like that in the open on purpose."<p>

"I don't know what you're talking about." Joel said as innocently as he could. "You're just a natural gunslinger with that thing."

"Really." Ellie replied. "But either way, Joel… thanks. We really shouldn't have done this, but…"

"It was no problem, Ellie."

"A shame we have to get rid of them now like I promised." Ellie tossed her gun aside.

"You know Ellie, if we go back to Tommy's after we finish whatever the Fireflies want us to do for them, maybe I can ask him or that scary wife of his to have a look around…"

"I would like that a lot, Joel."

"I'll make sure I won't forget it, no matter what goes down before then." Joel helped her back onto Callus. As he mounted himself, Joel looked back at the water guns, left on the forest ground. Who was it that said that the little things mattered the most? He had forgotten, but there was something else that he thought he had forgotten that maybe he felt again a few minutes ago. Joel looked down at his watch once more before galloping off with Ellie holding onto him tight. The old world had the most unexpected ways of re-manifesting itself to Joel.

As Joel rode, Ellie held onto him and looked back at the discarded water guns as well until they were long out of sight. She thought back to one enchanted evening not too long ago, an evening mere weeks before she had met Joel and Tess for the first time. Deep in her thoughts, Ellie's mind lingered on artifacts that she carried with her. Remnants of the dead. A girl's Firefly pendant, a boy's toy robot, and the switchblade. The switchblade, she pondered. In it were memories of someone she would never know beyond the writings the woman had made and the scant words of Marlene. Her thoughts made their way to her escort. He did not have to bring her this far, yet he still chose to. Even after Tommy became willing to take her off his hands. Even after he furiously told her that he knew she wasn't her daughter. And Ellie prayed that it would stay this way, that no matter what shit went down, he would never leave her behind like the rest.


	5. Year Zero

By Hilden B. Lade

* * *

><p>Returning home was no easy feat for me. Not when I had worked so hard to escape from that rusted ditch in the middle of the road in the first place. But it was winter break and I had no intention of staying at the dormitory after what had happened between me and Annie. She was where my glorious bump in the road had come tumbling down, a shaking of my pleasured stupor back into a stifling sense of reality. She was the uptown girl and I thought that nothing was going to stand in the way between us. She came from the rich folks who funneled her into the university on a check with a lot of zeroes, but Annie was a genuinely good girl. She was funny and sweet, full of surprises. I thought that we had a future together but she didn't see the same way about me. She found me empty and dour at the core and that she had tried to tolerate me but she couldn't do it anymore.<p>

Our break-up was unceremonious, taking place outside of Choi's Chinese Express where they served some of the best damn Mongolian beef I ever had. I nodded uncomfortably to her, trying to hold back a mix of tears and anger, between clenched chopsticks gripping nothing over a platter of rice and Hunan chicken. But when we parted ways and I returned to my dorm, I lay on the ground of my dorm for half an hour softly sobbing. Blaming her, and then blaming myself for not being a better boyfriend.

She was right about the emptiness and dourness. Enthusiasm coming fresh out of high school had been replaced by cynicism and a lack of belief in anything as the first year of college floated on. I didn't know what sort of purpose I had anymore outside of slugging my way through exam days and counting out the time as the clock hanging on my way ticked every second away, wondering if things would be different tomorrow. I wanted to get out of this shell which I had enclosed myself, become a Renaissance man, and win back her heart even after the love of my life had thrown me out of her world. But at the same time, there was a voice in my head telling me that things were hopeless and that I should take shit as it came because in the end, dust begot us and we return to dust. I tried to tell it to shut up but my will to do so faded.

So I did what any irresponsible young man confused about his life would do.

I snuck out of the dorm for one night and headed to an older mate's apartment. Got high, drunk… everything that would've had the dean sending me straight out of college. But it didn't matter to me at that moment, even the risk of getting caught. I was just tired. Tired of all the pretensions, tired of the broken dreams. The weed and the booze helped me escape to another world, to forget about all my troubles and self-doubts for just a few hours in time. Hours that mercifully felt like days.

I found myself reminded of Macbeth's soliloquy from the fifth scene of the fifth act. Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

But when I woke up, I found that I did regret it and finally truly asked myself if I had done anything worthwhile since escaping the rust heap. So I made the fateful call back to the land of rust from whence I came. Asked my parents if they were willing to pay the air fare home.

They said yes.

So despite my earlier reservations about coming back, after Christmas Day, I was on the plane home quicker than a speeding bullet. Out of the shining mecca of the Pacific coast and back to the barren wastes of the middle of nowhere. In the span of a few hours in the air, and another few hours in the back of a taxicab dazed from another smoke that I had smuggled onto the airplane not really caring if I was caught while gazing at the stars above, I had to accept that I was home. Back where I started, no real lesson learned from my time away.

* * *

><p>"Hey, Pete!" A familiar voice called out to me as the taxicab dropped me at the perimeter of town. I didn't even have to turn and see who it was to know who was calling me. He had been one of my buddies from the old days. But he was also one of those who never tried to escape the town. George stayed there even when the rest of us were trying to make our way to the coasts, to the cities where dreams were both made and crushed.<p>

"George! How the fuck are you doing?" I greeted him, shaking his hand.

"Fucking-A, that's how I'm doing! College working out for you, city boy?" He asks.

"Not as well as I hope. My folks doing well?"

"Both of 'em. Although some folks who work at the mine are sayin' that your daddy's gotten sick. But hey, they the same folks who've said a lotta things that ain't true. Don't fret now, Pete. Sure your daddy's a fuckin-A as ever."

"Great. What about my sister?" The year I graduated she was a high school freshman and had just finished developing her breasts.

"Kelsey? She's even better. A real jealousy of the other gals. I hear all the guys at the high school are trying to get in her pants."

"Fuck… they better not pull that shit while I'm in town. So George, what are you doing? Those night-vision goggles?"

"Yeah, cost an entire months of savings and took forever to ship, but they were worth it. Now I can hunt all the elk I want 24/7." Of course he was hunting. That's all he ever really seemed to care about. Hunting other sentient breathing organisms with his high-powered scoped rifles. But I found myself jealous of him. He didn't move on, he stayed here doing the same shit, but George seems happy with what he has. Unlike me, feeling nothing and unsure of what would become of me when I returned to the shining night lights of the Pacific Coast. "Say Peter, wanna go pop some elk with me? I think I ordered an extra pair and it's somewhere my garage…"

"Some other time, George. I need to see my family first."

"Sure, sure. Just give me a holler if we cross again, Pete."

* * *

><p>That night I ate with my family again for the first time since I skipped town for college. My parents were in a talkative mood, and I tried to answer them as best I could.<p>

"So, Peter, how was the big city?" My mother asked me.

"I felt lost seeing how large it really was. TV, the movies, they never did really prepare me for the real thing."

"You never bothered calling us or doing Facetime." She said almost accusingly. Like she caught me stealing out of the cookie jar or tying the cat's tail in a knot.

"Well, it slipped my mind. I was overwhelmed, honest. By everything…"

"Understandable, son." My father chimed in. "So, you got a girlfriend or anything back west?"

"No." I didn't tell them about Annie. I wasn't ready to talk to anyone about her yet. That was my problem. I never really liked to share my problems. I kept them within me… brewing and troubling only me. "Still mining for coal, pop?"

"Right on, kiddo. We're drilling deep, and I think they found another place for us to mine. The place around it is supposed to be a bit crowded, damp, and dark, but hey, if it lets me put food on the table I'd mine it."

"Where's Kelsey? I ask."

"Out with buddies. At the town theater."

"Don't tell me they released another Dawn of the Wolf movie, pop."

"No, sumthin' else. Think she got herself a boyfriend. Watching some dick flicks. Y'know, like Firemen vs. Ninja."

That night, I nestled on my childhood bed. I didn't know how much I really missed this place.

At least here, I knew finally what I was. Middle of the road mediocrity that had tried to make something out of himself but failed.

* * *

><p>I tried to get re-acclimated with the Hometown until I had to return to school. I faded in and out of local restaurants, sampling burgers with the burnt on the outside pink on the inside taste that only small places in the middle of nowhere can provide. I talked with Kelsey, my parents, as much as I could. But the same emptiness that now defined me began to seep its way into my conversations. They were beginning to get suspicious of me, and I felt that I could no longer tell them white lies soon. It sickened me, to lie to my own parents. To make them think that I was fine, that everything was fine, when it wasn't. I took George on his offer to go hunting, but during the day. We didn't bag anything big like a buck but we did take down a few birds. My father long ago taught me how to use a rifle in the woods behind our house and I thought that my skills with the gun would have receded. But to my surprise or maybe not, my gunmanship was still sharp.<p>

"Are you alright?" My mother asked me one day.

"Yes. I'm perfectly fine."

"Well, you seem more withdrawn…" She did seem genuinely concerned about my well-being but as far as I was concerned then maybe I wasn't alright but there was nothing to do that I could change it or anything worth changing for.

"No, everything's perfectly fine."

Everything seemed fine. Vapid, shallow, as only my barren outlook could perceive it, but fine nonetheless.

Until the day before New Year's Eve, when my father and several of his fellow miners emerged from the pits sick from something they had caught down there.

* * *

><p>On New Year's Eve it was just the two of us alone in the house, me and Kelsey. My mother was out of the house, off to visit our father in the town hospital. I fixed Kelsey the dinner that night. We sat in uncomfortable silence around the dinner table.<p>

"You think he's going to be alright?"

"No shit he's going to be alright."

"But don't you think it's weird? That it wasn't just him but lot of the other guys from the mine in the same day as well?"

"Probably just the air below Earth doing weird shit to the brain."

"Okay, but" The phone at that moment began to ring. I answered it. It was mother.

"Mom? What is it?"

"Just… just lock the door to the house and cover the windows." She seemed to be trying to control something, show you that nothing was wrong even thought there was something wrong. I knew the feeling too well. "Don't let anyone in. I'll… I'll shout when I get back."

"Wait… what? Mom, is something wrong?" I asked her.

"No, Peter, nothing's wrong. Look after your sister. Mommy loves yo-" She was cut off. No. Not just cut off. A scream. Her own screams. The screams of my mother that sent an electrifying chill through my veins. Well shit. I let the phone hang in silence for a few minutes, listening to the beeping and carnage that was unfolding before my ears until I put it back up.

"Has something happened to Mom?" Kelsey asked me.

"No, Kelsey, nothing's wrong. She's just going to be staying overnight with pop, that's all. Everything's going to be okay with them."

Oh god. Something bad had just happened to our mother and here I was lying to my sister about it. What… what was becoming of me? I felt something break past the vacant sign and feared that I was ill. Not physically… but in a different sense of ill.

* * *

><p>"Peter… what are you doing with Daddy's guns?" Kelsey asked me as I felt the shotgun in my hands. I had never shot anything like this before... but if the situation came down to it, I hoped that I knew how to handle the damn thing. "Here, this is for you." I told her and tossed her a smaller pistol.<p>

"What, Peter? What the hell is happening?" Kelsey demanded. "I don't know how to use a gun!"

"Nothing. Nothing is happening."

"Then why are you going through Daddy's guns?"

"A hunch, that's what." I tried to keep calm with her.

I took all the shells I could find and placed them in my pocket.

"Daddy's going to be very mad when he finds out you messed with his stuff, Peter."

If there was still a daddy to get mad at me, whatever had happened at the hospital. I didn't know yet… how could any of us?

* * *

><p>At around eight AM there was a loud knocking at the door. Whoever it was did not call out, like mother said it was. So I stood a few inches from the locked door, pointing father's shotgun at it.<p>

"Who is it?" I yelled at the door.

"Open up! It's me, George!" George's voice was frantic. I lowered my weapon and cautiously peeled the door back. George was dressed in his hunting gear, night vision goggles and all. His cheeks looked red and he was panting for breath.

"George… what the hell is happening?" I ask him.

"Jeezus, nobody knows. Something bad's gone down at the hospital. At the cops in town are at it right now!"

"Christ… my folks were back there!"

"Shit, Pete! We gotta go get 'em!"

"Peter, what's happen- George? What the hell are you doing here with that gun?"

"Kelsey…" Before I could tell her to stay inside there was a loud bump against the back of the house, like something was trying to break in. And in the distance, the sound of a mewling cat as something tore it in half. "…get in George's car."

"What? But didn't you say we have to stay inside earlie"

"Listen, the house isn't as secure as I thought it was! Just get in!" Somewhat forcibly, I pushed my younger sister into the backseat of George's dusty sedan.

"Got any ammo for that shottie, Pete?" George asked me as he started the engine. "I can always lend ya some."

I took out all the shells that I was carrying on me. "Not the motherload but I think it should be enough. I mean, what's the worse that's happening over there? The Chinese invasion?"

"Yer a bit of a funnier guy since ya went to college, Pe- Jeezus, what the hell is that?" I saw it but I couldn't believe it. Charging directly into our headlights was a man. I recognized him immediately. It was Jimmy Plant, one of the town's fellow hunting enthusiasts who made the forest kind of a second home. There was something wrong with him. Blood was dribbling from his nose, his fingernails were coated with more of the red stuff. His eyeballs frightened me the most. I remembered Jimmy as having pale blue eyes, but something had changed him. His eyeballs were a glowing hue of cracked red. And to make things worse, the bastard was raving incoherently. Then he charged onto the hood of George's sedan, began clawing at the glass. Bastard was turning his hands to ground beef but he was actually cracking the glass. Kelsey was screaming, George was frantically asking Jimmy what the hell was wrong with him but I knew what had to be done. It was either Jimmy or us.

Some of the glass that shattered went into my face but I closed my eyes before the shards could do anything serious to them. Jimmy screamed as the slug hit him square in the chest and he tumbled off.

"Jeezus, Pete, I think you just shot up one of my hunting budd" There was a crunch as George's sedan rolled over Jimmy. "And 'ah think that I jus' ran over him."

"Peter, what the hell was wrong with him?"

"I don't know." I replied to Kelsey. But deep down, I think I knew what was wrong with him. That somehow it was connected to what was wrong with my father and his fellow miners. That I had a sinking feeling… despair… what had happened to my mother and there would be no rescue or family reunion tonight. "He just must've ate some… wrong mushrooms in the woods or something."

"Yeah, I always warned him 'bout that." George shook his head. "But I thought he knew his stuff about 'shrooms."

"We all fuck up at least once, George."

"You killed him, Pete."

"I know." He was the first human being that I had ever murdered. Not even twenty yet and I already was a killer. But I didn't feel as disturbed as I should have, about the weight of snapping one's cord prematurely. He was trying to get us and instead I got him. I felt more disturbed at how nonchalant I felt about the killing after being thrust in a situation where it had become necessary.

"Peter… Mom & Dad will be okay, right?" Kelsey asked me. I finally decided to tell her the truth.

"I don't know."

* * *

><p>"Alright… we should be nearin' the hospice soon… holy crap!" George gasped as the hospital came into view. The hospital, aside from Police HQ and the high school, was the only two story building in town. And right now, that second floor was in flames. My god, I then realized. My mother had been on the second floor where my dad was when she called me. Then we saw the barricade formed by the police cars. And then I heard something coming from inside the hospital as we got out. Screams… and gunshots. All three of us ran up to the police blockade. An officer instantly walked up to us and shooed us off.<p>

"Listen… officer, we've got family up there!" I told him.

"I know, but you can't hang around here!" He stated, holding his ground.

"What the hell is going on up there?"

"I don't know! It was a routine inspection by the nurses of some of the sick miners when some of them started to go cra"

"Oh my god! They're getting out!" An officer gripping his pistol shouted. "Hold your ground!" An older voice interjected. I turned around and saw scrambling out of the door several hospital-gown clad crazies who looked just like Jimmy. They were raving, twitching, waving their arms and wildly thrashing their heads.

"Stand down and put your hands behind your head!" Another policeman with a mic shouted at the crazies. "Don't come any closer! I repeat… or we open fir-ARGH!" He screamed as one of the crazies leapt onto him. The crazy patient pounded the poor policeman with his fists as the policeman tried to fight him off before more of the crazies flooded onto him. Holy shit… I saw that they were actually biting into him. Like freaking zombies out of a Romero flick.

"Jaysus!" George screamed as he lifted his rifle but the officer pointed his own pistol at him and George lowered it. "We don't need any goddamn wannabe Rambos fucking things up here even more!"

The police began to fire. Some of the crazies fell but others made it past the bullets and began to scramble over the cars.

"Get the fuck out of here!" The officer who had shooed us yelled. "Head to the pharmacy!" He cried one final time before joining his fellow officers.

* * *

><p>The officer at Bertie's let us in without much of a hassle. He only forced us to turn our guns, much to George's protest. The pharmacy was modestly large, with six different departments of stuff they sold and an entire soda counter where the employees behind the counter used to spoon out ice cream or whip up milkshakes. There were a lot of other people in there, including several kids, but it didn't seem like the entire town. I asked the copper where the rest of the town was. He explained that they were either trying to ward off the crazed patients at the hospital or asleep. I asked him what they would do about the people who were asleep and told him about Jimmy Plant. Jimmy wasn't a miner but he still was like one of those crazies. It wasn't only the miners in the hospital who had gone loco. The cop said they were trying their best to evacuate the whole town but their manpower was too far divided between holding up the fort and setting up forts.<p>

"Did you get our guns back?" George asked as I returned to our corner behind the soda counter.

"No."

"Dad… did you see him back there at the hospital?"

"No." I put my arm around Kelsey's shoulder, tried to tell her that everything would be alright when the sun rose, but even then I knew that my notion would mean nothing.

But still… we all needed a hope in hell to cling onto, didn't we? What else keeps all us miserable sentient beings from leaping off the nearest skyscraper if there isn't something pushing us forward? I decided then to take another walk around the pharmacy. See if there was anyone else that I recognized. I ran into Bertie, who still was manning the place all these years later.

"Hey kid. Didn't expect to see you ever again round these parts." Bertie was fat and balding, in that Santa sort of way and not the pedo sort of way. He had become a mentor of sorts for the many kids that used to hang around these parts when they had nothing better to do after school, but like our parents, he simply faded into the background as we came into our own in the teenage years.

"Hi Bertie. Business been good?"

"Declining, kid. People round here keep moving out and those who stay ain't makin' babies anymore. Say, want a soda or something?"

"I'm sorry." I thought about the crushed corpse with the bullet hole in his chest outside of my childhood home right now. "Not exactly in the mood."

"You know what's happening out there? Cops all of a sudden came knocking on my door and put me in charge of all these townfolks."

"Bad shit, Bertie. Really bad shit."

"What sorta shit?"

"You might have to sacrifice some of your stock. We may need it." I told him that some of people were acting strange. Mumbling nonsense, eyes glowing red as blood streamed from orifices, attacking everyone they saw. At first Bertie didn't look like he was buying it. But then he looked at some of the other people huddled in the store. I noticed then that some of them had been bandaged and that there were noticeable stains and scratches on the areas which were still bare. So he agreed to let me have a look around and that what we took he would mark off as surplus.

It made me uncomfortable how everyone watched us two and talked in hushed whispers. And I couldn't help but stare at a child with a bandaged arm. The child seemed sick. His mother kept putting her hand over his head, like he had a fever. Boxes of pills from the pharmacy counter in the back had been scattered around them.

I asked her how he got the bandage.

She told me it was none of my business.

* * *

><p>"Got you something to eat, Kels." I tossed her a bag of chips. Parents told me that she had been on a health trip lately, refusing to eat anything that might change her figure slightly like meat or cream, but I guess that the stress of what had just happened changed her stance on consumption. She scarfed down the chips.<p>

Along my way from the aisles to the counter I picked up several articles that could be improvised into weaponry just as deadly as the confiscated guns. Who knew that the local pharmacy could also sell you a killing spree? With a roll of duct tape, I bound two shiny kitchen knives to a wooden plank. I had also found a lighter, but no spray paint. But to compensate, I had taken some bottles of booze and multiple rags. Keep in mind, I had no idea how to actually cook up fire bottles but as the movies always showed, as well as actual damn science, the human body sucked against a raging wall of fire. I just hoped that how the movies showed how to do it was the right way, lest I incinerate us all.

"I don't think the copper up front is gonna approve of yous making that."

"Copper took away all our goddamn guns. You think if those things get in here, he alone can hold 'em off?"

"Hold 'em off with a big stick? You serious?"

"Hey, a big stick's better than just my fists of fury, ain't it?"

At that moment there was a loud banging on the glass on the entry door. Some of the people huddled amongst the aisles began to scream. I rushed to the front of the store with George and Bertie to see what it was. The cop at the front was huddling in several of his fellow officers. We all could hear gunshots getting closer.

"Jayzus! Give us our guns back!" George yelled to the cop as the running crazies popped into sight.

"No! We can handle this, citizen!" The cop reassured us as he pulled the last of his fellow officers in. "Quick, seal off this door and the windows!" The cops in the pharmacy moved quickly, locking the door shut and sealing off all the glass with planks of wood. Right before they nailed in the final plank the crazies finally hit. The force knocked back the cops with the hammer, and the hand of the crazy started to claw its way inside. It snatched the heel of an officer and started to pull him out through the glass it had broken.

"Shit! Shit! Get 'im offa me!" The cop whipped out his pistol but the other cops grabbed him and tried to tug him off. It seemed like the tug of war between the one hand of the howling thing outside and the grunting cops would've torn the poor uniformed boy apart before Bertie grabbed a fallen hammer and smashed it against the thing's hand. There was an inhuman shriek from outside as the hand receded, and the boards were quickly put up.

We could hear the glass breaking. The things would be throwing themselves against the barricade for the entire night. But everyone in the pharmacy seemed confident enough that the crap we had erected would last for the night. Tomorrow, New Year's Day, that would be the problem. Would we try to hold out, waiting for the goddamn National Guard or even better, Superman to arrive and save us? Or would we be desperate to make a run for it? As usual, a lot of conflicting thoughts about what lay in the future were on my mind. I returned to the soda counter, sitting on one of the fading red stools. I held an empty cup in my hand, pretended that I was drinking something. Not ice cream soda or a malt… something much harder, something that could drown out all the messed up shit which had happened on my little sojourn back home.

"Are you alright, Kelsey?"

"No… no… I'm not alright… I'm scared."

"That's okay. So am I."

"Hey, Pete." George sat down next to me. He had removed his night vision goggles, and his face was drooping. "What the hell is happening?"

"I don't know. People… normal people we were just talking to yesterday are going crazy and killing everybody. What do you think caused all of it?"

"Maybe… just maybe… it's the government. Like 'dey developed some sorta secret bio weapon like on teevee and 'dey chose us here to experiment it on." He shook his head, and I guessed that not even he believed in the full validity of that statement.

"I know the federal gov is in a lousy shape and all, but I don't think that testing out bioweapons on their own citizens is number one on their priority list."

"Then what do you think is causin' people ta' start actin' like goddamn zombies?"

"I don't know. But whatever it is… it sure as hell wasn't something the Hawaiian had the SoD cook up."

Maybe the time had come at last. When there was no more room in hell.

I didn't dream that night.

There was only a veil of dark. Formless, unfeeling, a cover of nothingness.

* * *

><p>My reverie of nothingness was broken early the next day. In part by the lights of the drugstore, in part by the screams, in part by the hands of George shaking me back to reality. I thought as my eyes flickered open that some poor shits were trapped right outside and that we could only be forced to listen to their death screams as the maniacs tore them apart. But the further I came to, I realized that the screams were actually coming from inside the store.<p>

"Wake up, Pete!" He continued to shake me even after my eyes were wide open.

"Alright, alright, I'm awake- what the hell?"

"Yeah, George. I hoped that yesterday was just a horrible dream…" Kelsey muttered.

"Grab that stick of yours and let's hurry! Some shit's going up front!"

The front of the store was absolute pandemonium. I instinctively got in front of my younger sister. No one was helping the woman pinned to the ground. I recognized her as the one who had told me to mind my own business. The bandaged kid was on top of her, but he was no longer a doting son. Instead, he was a son clawing at his own mother as she struggled to hold him off even as his jaws gnashed mere inches from her face. She screamed for him to stop. The cops looked like they were uncertain. They had the opportunity to take the shot but none of them really wanted to be the one who had the capped kid on their records. And we could still hear the crazies outside hitting at our barricade. Sooner or later, something would have to give… but now we were trapped inside with one of them. George and I moved quickly. I smashed the blunt side of my stick against the kid's neck. It squealed and it stopped trying to claw at its mother. I got ready to hit it again, this time with the sharpened ends, but the mother screamed and she pushed me out of the way.

"Are you crazy! You're going to kill him!"

George and Bertie slammed him into one of the aisles with a heavy crate by shoving it across the floor. Some of the other people joined them in pushing the crate to pin down the boy, and one of the cops finally got in him and cuffed the crazy boy to a nearby display pole. The boy continued to thrash at us, despite being trapped. His mother was damn near hysterical at this point. She tried to run for him but the cops held her back.

"What happened to him?" One of the cops asked her.

"Nothin… nothing..."

"Listen, lady." George told her. "He was fine yesterday but now he gone and turned into one of those things… what if there's more of us like him? We can't go outside since they right on our doorstep..."

She told us that she and the boy had been visiting his father in the hospital. Right when the craziness started. The boy had been bitten on the arm. She managed to get him out before the real shit started and she took him here. She thought she had gotten the arm disinfected but… everything else she said afterwards was indecipherable due to hysterics. Goddamn… it was just like the fucking zombie apocalypse as the movies always said the craziness spread.

"Shit…" George looked at the cops. "You fellas were fightin' those things…"

"Oh fuck!" The one who had let us in said. "Officer Welker got one right on the shoulder!"

"Where the hell is Officer Welker now?" Bertie asked, who was now brandishing a large mop rather menacingly.

"Damn it… he went to the john late nigh" An officer charged out of the door at the back of the pharmacy. He stumbled his way through the chaotic aisles but it was clear that the law abiding officer was long gone. Officer Welker wildly flailed his arms as he ran towards us. One of the officers tried to get off a shot but the crazy cop was on him faster than he could fire and the gun discharged. The officer screamed and there was a sudden foul scent in the pharmacy air but his fellow cops blasted Welker off. But before we could catch our breath…

There was the sound of wood breaking.

Screaming of the damned, gnashing of teeth.

We saw where the gun discharged.

"Fuck… I think now would be a good time to give us our guns back." I told the cops as the crazed people began to claw their way inside the pharmacy. The head officer reluctantly tossed me, George, and Bertie three revolvers. We battled the crazies with our bullets and at first I thought that we could hold them off long enough. But their numbers were relentless. And as the bodies began to pile up, the door began to give way. Soon enough, we would be overrun. It was hopeless to stay and fight.

"Pete… you take your sister and run. I'll stay here with the coppers and cover ya!" George told me.

"C'mon, George. Let them handle this shit! It's suicide to stay here!" I replied.

"Well, they need all the guns they can get right now and I think I'm a gunman, ain't I?" George said as he fired his revolver at the hand of a maniac.

"Alright, George…" I took Kelsey by her hand and we ran through the store towards the back alongside Bertie and the other survivors. We ushered through the backdoor, into the alleyway. Outside… it was pandemonium as the rest. Gunshots were ringing out everywhere. There was someone screaming 24/7. Multiple fires had been started or were starting. Some of the cops who had been bitten turned as well, and looks like some of the sleeping populace had been added to the crazy populace. Those of us who had guns covered the passage of those who didn't. It was no man for himself business here. We looked out for each other, and we did our best to keep all of us alive.

I thought my lungs would burst due to lack of oxygen as I ran at any minute.

It's always the girl who trips in the movies.

But instead it was me, after I threw my last Molotov backwards to create a firewall to cut off the direct path between us and the crazies.

After eating a bit of dirt, I struggled to pull myself up. "Leave me! Just get yourself out of here!" I yelled at Bertie. Everyone listened but my sister. She ran back to pull me up. Oh god, oh god, I scrambled to find the revolver. Where had it fallen? There was only the stick which I had strapped to my back. Then I heard Kelsey gasp. I turned and saw who she was looking at.

Our father.

He had turned just like the rest. Reddened eyes, bleeding nose, cracked lips. His skin had turned a sickening hue. His hair was disheveled. His chin and beard were stained with dried blood. But we recognized him instantly. And for a split second, he looked like he did too. There was a glimmer of regret and horror in his eyes… like he could see what he was doing but he had no control of his body anymore, and then that look was replaced by frenzied murder. He charged at us and he was on top of Kelsey before she could run off. She screamed and he screamed.

I knew what I was about to do.

I didn't know what to say. Sorry that I never called before this week? Sorry that I wasn't there to be with you and mom in your true final moments together? Sorry that I was about to bash out your brains with a big stick? None of the apologies in the world would alleviate the weight of my actions. I swung my stick, knocking him off. He hissed at me… the voice still sounded like my father's, but it was no longer his. It only made me swing my stick harder, mutilate his face even further.

There was one consoling thought. Maybe if there was a bit of my dad still in there… I was freeing him so he could be on his way to heaven or someplace better than what he had experienced in his last hours.

When it was done… I turned and walked back to Kelsey. I found the revolver on the way and picked it up. Fat lot of help it was. I held her in my arms and comforted her. She was softly crying.

"They're dead, Peter… mom and dad… they're dead…"

"Kels… Kels… listen to me… are you alright, sis?" I tried to make her better. But I saw in front of us, the town as it burned and tore itself apart, that nothing would be alright for either of us in the near future.

"No, Peter. I'm not." She showed me her arm. "Daddy… before he got me onto the ground… he… Daddy.."

"Jesus… no." I mutter.

"Please… Peter… I don't wanna die but I also don't wanna become one of them like Daddy…"

"It's okay, Kelsey. I won't let the monsters get you."

I tried to finish myself off as well but she was the last bullet. I screamed, the first outright anger I had shown in years. I hadn't been this pissed since ever, not even when Annie broke up with me. I tossed the emptied gun aside and lay my sister on the ground. I could hear the crazies running for me in the distance. I prayed that George, my buddy, was still alive. I prayed that old Bertie and the other people who still were themselves in this hell on earth had made it out. I thought that it would be goners for me, that I would be joining Kelsey and the folks in a few short minutes. I gripped my stick. It would break in a few more hits but that didn't matter. I was sick of running. I had nothing to live for anymore, even less than what I had in those pathetic final hours stoned in college before I came home. I would go down with my fists.

But then the helicopters and trucks roared in. A battalion of soldiers in black popped up. The most heavily armored soldiers I've ever seen, covered in head to toe in black body armor that definitely wasn't Kevlar. They all carried assault rifles and wore a gas mask beneath their helmet. I wasn't relieved to see salvation arrive at last. Rather, I was fucking pissed. Had they been just a few hours sooner, that whole mess evacuating the pharmacy could've been avoided. I didn't even know what had become of George after we fled, but I knew for certain that my sister would still be alive. Maybe even earlier, so would my mother. As the soldiers marched past me, into the town, I approached one of them yelling obscenities.

"What the fuck took you bastards so long?"

"Civilian spotted. Unclear if he's infected or not." She spoke into a radio. She was silent as I continued to verbally assault her until an order arrived over the other end. "Understood, sir."

"Down, civilian. On the ground, hands on your knees." She ordered.

"You know what? Fuck you and your orders! Every last thing I cared about is dead, and you want me to be your little bi"

The butt end of a rifle really fucking hurt.

* * *

><p>So that's how I ended up here.<p>

They've kept me locked up in this empty, padded room for what seems like days. But I know that's it just been hours. But when there's nothing but your mind to play with, time becomes strange. There's not a single piece of furniture around besides the shitter, nothing but a locked door and a blackened one-way mirror. Are they going to release me? I don't know. But they do seem willing to talk at least. When I banged loudly on the one-way glass, they were agreeable enough to hand me these sheets of paper and the pen on which I am writing write now. Fancy pen, five colors for the price of one. Ink is shitty quality, but I feel like there's a lot that I've got to write about so at least I'll run out slower than I would with one pen. When the man in the white coat and his armored guards carrying guns stopped to hand me this stuff, I managed to ask Dr. Bowman (name on his tag, at least) some Qs about what happened yesterday.

"What happened yesterday?"

"Sorry. Top-secret, government access only."

"Of course it is… Doc, I was there. I lost my entire fucking family to those… things. Why bother hiding the truth from those of us who already know shit happened?"

"Fine." He talked to me about a new strain of a fungus I had never heard about. Cordyceps or some shit. How the strain had mutated to target the brain cells of human and warp them, leading to symptoms like increased aggressiveness and loss of restraint. How it started when people began to eat crops that had been infected with a different strain of the fungus. He said that there already had been isolated outbreaks before my hometown's. Even one on a mid-air plane had happened. But the world governments had done a bang up job of making sure that these stayed isolated, with the survivors ferried off to facilities like this for research. A fungus. Not a virus like I thought, not like how the movies always made shit like this go down.

"Are you going to let me out?"

"Sorry, can't do that. It's a matter of national, no scratch that, international security."

"Doc, c'mon. You had the goons here strip search me along with everyone else they rounded up when I got here. There were no bite marks on me… I can't be infected… I'm… I'm not a zombie, alright?"

"Zombie? Hmph… yes, the infected act just like the movies but this is no Night of the Living Dead we're talking about here. From past cases, we've been able to divulge that the fungus is also able to spread itself through airborne spores…"

"I didn't breath in any goddamn spores, I swear!"

"And as for the name… well, those infected with the cordyceps are still alive, just not totally in control of themselves anymore. The big guns at FEDRA are already making names for what to call infected if we're forced to go public."

"If you're forced to go public? Did you see what those things did to my hometown, you asshole?" I screamed the last part at him, prompting the guards to step forward but he waved them away. I hadn't meant to yell or even call him an asshole but for a second there I lost control. I don't know why. He has to be lying. It's all some sort of cruel trick. I'm not a zombie or infected or whatever. I'm still me. I'm human. I have to be. But I feel sicker by the minute.

"Yes, we did and we do sympathize with your losses. But what you don't understand is that nationwide panic will do even more harm. FEDRA has to work things out first. That's why we haven't disposed of you yet. You are a special case. You've lasted for longer than the average infected specimen. Maybe if you keep it up, maybe we can develop a vaccine or cure for the CBI to prevent what happened in your hometown from happening on a larger scale."

"Jesus Christ, man. Quit saying that! I'm not infected! Just let me out of here and I'll show you!"

"So you say."

And then he left.

It was hopeless to argue anymore. But I know I'm not infected. I wasn't bitten and I didn't breath in any goddamn spores. I could've made another racket until they finally got fed up, shot me, and dumped me in a river nearby so I didn't have to deal with any of their shady secret government bullshit but hey I became convinced that I was probably going . Maybe I actually have found a new meaning for myself after all. So I've resigned myself to writing down everything that happened to me New Year's Day until I figure out how to get out of this place. I know that these pages probably won't make it out and that the scientists will probably have disposed of me in a ditch before I can finish writing down everything, but I can still dream the dream of being the bastard who sets off the spark that exposes how deep of a shit the world is drowning in. The spark that smothers those blissfully unaware in great panic.

There is still a voice tugging at the back of my head, growing stronger as I start to feel sicker. Oh god, why am I feeling sick? I'm not infected… I'm not going to become one of those things and die like the rest. I do my best to scream at my own accusations in my mind, begging for it to shut up. But it's too strong and like the night of my break-up with Annie Miller, I found myself in a wreck on the floor yelling at myself. Back to year zero for me. No lesson learned. Do I force myself to face the possibility that hell has arrived, that we who walk in the year Anno Domini 2013 the last of us who knew the world as it was before the heavens closed their doors to us? I no longer believed in the words of Christ the Redeemer, but I hoped to whatever higher power there was that my family was at least in the nice half of afterlife, if it existed. As for me, I believed in none of that… so I bid my farewells in my mind. I had nowhere to fly to after I perished.

Maybe I would kill myself. I had always contemplated suicide as of late, but I could never bring myself to do it. I thought that perhaps something would present itself to give a purpose to my wayward life, but it never came around. And in the days that recently passed, what did I have to live for? I saw what those things had did to just a single town. What would happen if the entire globe was like that? Crazy runners cluttering the streets, government and society falling apart, families tearing each other to pieces, the whole bundle of works. I somehow doubted that FEDRA, UN, whatever was in on this CBI would be able to contain the pandemic or the truth long enough to save the world. Too bad, aside from the toilet, that there was nothing in here to do it with.

After I finish writing, I'll resign myself to sitting against the wall. Sit back, count the clocks that tell the time and lose my mind piece by piece. Or mayhap I can do something more proactive, despite it being sheer suicide. Even if I make it out of this room, this place seems too heavily guarded to make escape to the real world an easy feat. But if I can get my hands on an assault rifle, maybe I can at least wipe the doc's smug smile off his face.

I gaze around the room, looking for any potential exits.

It will be suicide, either way, staying put or trying to bust out.

But I guess I'll do it. Who cares if I die? I don't.

I have nothing left to lose.


	6. Vanishing Grace

**By Jack  
><strong>

* * *

><p>When only a hazy fragment of winter hung in the desolate air, the man and girl left behind the frozen wastes and headed south. As the last crystals of snow melted, it became apparent that for both of them, it was not only the weather and landscape that changed. The girl felt a growing emptiness within her, withdrawing the cheer that had once rung in her voice. She barely glanced at the joke books and comics as they headed south. Each passing day the two of them talked less and less. The girl thought she had seen everything cruel the world had to throw at them. But in the frozen hell, she found out that she was wrong. She remembered what almost happened to her at that maniac's hands. And she learned what happens when one has everything to lose and what they will do to survive. The journey had changed her with every step. No longer was she the girl who had rode on carousels and played in photo booths. The cruel dawn began to cast its light upon her. But as her wall built itself up, the man started to let his long-erect barrier crumble. What began to fill the void that tore itself open decades ago wasn't as angelic but she was the chance he had. To redeem his failures and begin anew when their long journey ended its course.<p>

The end was near. But the girl found herself lost in thought as her eyes lingered upon the highway mural. Her body was motionless except for the strands of red hair blowing in the cool spring breeze. Upon the surface that had not been consumed by the wilderness was the etching of a buck deer. How long ago had it been since she hunted a deer like that? And her thoughts turned to memories of loss. Each loss slowly took its toll on her, and one-by-one she recounted them all. There was a twinge of guilt that what made her special allowed her to live and not them. The possibility that when she and the man finally found the elusive Fireflies that the world's curse could be absolved did little to alleviate the weight of their flickering lights. Cure or no cure, she still would've been too late to save those who were left behind. If she was the key to preventing anyone else from being left behind… she thought of the man who had been to hell and beyond to bring her this far… so be it. But it still wouldn't make a difference that so many she cared about had left her behind already. Abruptly, the voice of the man shook her from her contemplation.

Ellie! He called out to her. She turned to look at him, and their end destination came into full view. Abandoned skyscrapers still stood, even as the world around them had moved on. Long stretches of power lines that had long lost all spark. Cars littered the road ahead of them, their tires melted with paint-chipped metal giving way to rust. Torn banners that gave testament to the safe zone that once stood here before it too like the cars were abandoned. Did you hear me?

She told him the truth. No. What?

Look. The man motioned to her with his hand. He stood near a blue sign that was below two green highway signs that read Salt Lake City and Tunnel East. Hospital. This is where we get off. Let's go, kiddo. The girl nodded her head and she began to walk with him. The man and the girl crossed the decayed overpass. Walking past the forgotten husks of cars, walking past spots where the manmade concrete had given way to patches of grass and the bright white petals of small flowers in bloom. The man continued to talk to her as they walked and the calm air glided past the soft skin of the cheeks.

Heh. You feel that breeze? I tell you, on a day like this, I'd just sit on my porch and pick away at my six-string. As they passed a tarnished blue car. Y'know, once we're done with this whole thing, I'm gonna teach you how to play guitar. A school of cawing black crows flew over the bridge in front of them and away from their sight. Yeah, I reckon you'd really like that.

What do you say, huh? He asked the girl. He noticed her silence as she clutched the straps of her backpack walking forward. Ellie, I'm talking to you.

Oh. She remembered what he was just talking about. She knew she would have loved to. The girl enjoyed learning about and experiencing firsthand the artifacts that the old world forgot to bury when it died. But her mind didn't want to think about the old world. Too much heaviness weighed down on it as each step brought them closer to the journey's end. And she didn't really feel like talking to her companion and friend either. Yeah, sure. That sounds great.

The man and girl continued on the road, another flock of birds flying away from their perch on the corroded shells as their presence loomed. The man noticed that a large RV was in front of them, a growth of vines overtaking its painted body. With a downcast apathy, he saw fallen down upon its open steps a skeleton of a woman in clothes that had not yet decayed into nothingness. The man stepped over the skeleton, into the RV. The girl did not follow him. He saw items that had once belonged to the inhabitants of the car. Pills. Bottles of alcohol. Cloth rags and boxes of granulated sugar. On top of the counter opposite the supplies was a photograph. A smiling couple, with two children not much different from his lost daughter, in front of a grassy plain as forest pines loomed behind them. He flipped over the photograph. Two words were sketched on it. Forgive Us.

Before he even looked at what had been covered by bloodstained sheets in the back of the RV, he knew what was underneath. And all he could mutter as he remembered the frantic struggle they all had endured trying to stay alive in the hectic weeks that followed Day Zero was God…

The man grabbed a few scraps of metal that were hanging in cabinet. He did his best not to look at the two small, still forms that lay atop of dried blood. There was a baseball bat back there as well but he ignored it. He ran out of the RV and back to the girl as fast as he could. She was standing in front of a bus advertisement. It had been mostly covered up by vines and moss but they could still see the jumbo jet and the words Air West.

I dreamt about flying the other night. She said.

Oh yeah?

Yeah.

He himself hadn't thought about the years when mankind still took to the skies for a long time. Go on, tell me about it.

She brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. So, I'm on this big plane full of people. She tried to reenact the dream with motions of her head and hands. And everyone is screaming and yelling 'cause the plane's going down. So I walked to the cockpit, open the door, there's no pilot. I tried to use the controls but obviously I have no clue how to fly a plane… and right before we crash, I wake up. She walked away from the bus. I've never been on a plane, isn't that weird?

Well, you know, dreams are weird.

The man and girl walked down the path, now going downwards as the bridge connected itself to the streets below. They passed a schoolbus on the way down. Both tried hard not to think about what may have been inside. As they made their way off the highway, they could see signs of the military force that once occupied these paths.

Look at that. Another city. Another abandoned quarantine zone. The path ahead of them was blocked by the wreckage of a tour bus that lodged its way in between the concrete walls that were laced with barbed wire. They had come across many obstacles like these on their way here. The man climbed atop of a car rammed next to the bus and made his way to its rooftop. He noticed looming in the distance, sandwiched between taller buildings. The sun still shined off its glass windows. A large cross was erected on its surface.

There's that hospital that Firefly mentioned. C'mon, kiddo. She grunted as she pulled herself onto the bus and landed on the grounds of the former quarantine zone.

Ahead of them was a large building. Letters on it read Logan James Bus Station. The doors had fallen off their hinges, leaving the entrance agape.

Maybe we cut through here, huh? He told her. They entered the Bus Station. The entire building was cluttered with wreckage as if a tornado had gone through it, with a great tree planted in the center undisturbed. Through broken windows grew moss and vines that crept into the once-human domains. Neglected maps tacked to billboards. Posters advertising the burger joints in town. Through glass-less frames in the windows shone in sunlight. The man looked around. Some more pills and powder that he turned into bombs. Next to a discarded suitcase was a note a man wrote to his wife in the early days. We didn't have a clue back then, the man remembered as he finished reading it. Above a poster advertising Zion National Park was a ledge. The man could see the small legs of a ladder peeking over.

Well, we could use that ladder.

Here we go.

The man propped his back against the wall and readied himself to push the girl up. It was a process they had done many times on this journey, and she responded quicker than a cat running to the dinner bowl each time he required her to help him. But in this hour, things were different. She did not come to him to help him bring the ladder down. It had been bugging him since the moment they got to this city. This was definitely not the same girl that had fought with him through Pittsburgh or the girl who rode with him from his brother's dam to the university. The girl he knew never seemed so withdrawn or reluctant to joke around or have a chat.

Ellie. He called to her as he sighed. His voice echoed through the empty bus station.

What?

The ladder. C'mon.

Right. She got off the empty bench where she had been sitting and strode past him without saying another word.

Using all his strength, he pushed the girl up onto the ledge. The man watched the girl as she dragged the ladder towards him. But before she could lower it fully, the girl turned her head. She saw something. What the hell could it be? The man wondered. Was it the Fireflies?

Oh my god. All thoughts of the ladder in her mind were abandoned. She dropped it and it crashed in front of the man.

What is it? Ellie? He asked as he picked up the ladder and climbed up. As he got up, she had only a few vague words for him.

You gotta see this! And the man heard in her voice instantly not the cold girl he had just exchanged passing words with. There was a glimmer of the eager youth that he had known before the first days of spring came around.

What is it? The hell is it? He asked her again as he followed her through the derelict hallways on the second floor of the bus station. She didn't answer him but she kept looking out the dirty windows as she passed them.

Are you kidding me? She said to herself. They had reached a room where the wall had been blown out. The man thought he saw something pass its head through the gap and his heart too skipped a beat. No way… it couldn't be, not after all these years of neglect. He had to be seein' things again, like the early days when he was still fighting his way through the grief both mentally and physically. The man took a left after the girl past a row of smashed vending machines, onto a covered bridge.

C'mon! Hurry up! She beckoned for him to quicken his pace and not wanting to disappoint his charge, the man obliged. Ahead of them, there was a small door that led to another room with the wall missing. And as the man stepped his way into the room, he knew for sure that he wasn't seein' things.

A giraffe. After all these years, the zoo animals were still alive. And the man remembered. His daughter had a stuffed toy just like one of these back in her room. Even as she got to the age when children started to discard old playthings like that in favor of digital entertainment, the girl had kept it in her room.

Branches crumpled as leaves fell stories to the ground below when the giraffe ate from them. The man and the girl slowly approached the beast.

Shh, don't scare it.

I won't. I won't.

The giraffe turned its head, looking at them. For a second, the girl worried that the man hadn't lived up to his promise, that the animal would bolt away. But it merely flicked its tail and turned its head back to the leaves, biting on them again. The man was reaching for the giraffe's long spectacled neck.

What are you doing?

It's all right, come here. He called for her. The man was patting the animal gently, brushing its fur. The giraffe lapped out its tongue and continued to eat, undisturbed by the more personal presence the man and girl were bringing to it.

Hurry up. And the girl touched the giraffe's head.

Hey there. She said to it.

As it finally walked away, the girl turned to the man. So fucking cool. Aw, she commented on its moving away. Where's it off to? Here, c'mon. Let's go.

Slow down, kiddo.

C'mon. She replied.

Hurry up, c'mon, c'mon. Her voice echoed down the stairway as she scurried upwards. The man only smiled to himself as they sprinted upwards and onto the balcony.

Oh man, the girl said as they saw the full herd in the distance. Wow, look at those things. The giraffes were far from their native habitats in the ruins of this city, but they had found a home regardless. The man and girl stood on the balcony, their rapid journey grounded to a halt at last as they watched the giraffes.

Just watching.

For a moment, none of it mattered. The losses that they had endured and the sins that they had committed, brushed to the side. The man and girl stood transfixed, just watching the herd fade away into the horizon. It was a moment that should have lasted forever but the world as it was decreed that it be only a few sweet minutes. The two stood in awed silence, each caught up in silent contemplation and remembrance until the man finally talked to the girl. It was a repeat of words that had been previously uttered.

Is it everything you were hopin' for?

It's got its ups and downs, but… you can't deny the view though.

The man walked away from the girl, who continued to watch the giraffes. There was another set of stairs exiting the balcony, hidden behind another door. His hand grasped the handle, but he lingered and hesitated in pulling it open. He had already lost one daughter to this world. Who knew what sort of horrors waited for them in between here and the hospital? He knew that if he lost another… two wounds in his body that would never be stitched shut no matter how much antiseptic and bandage were applied. The girl was now standing in front of him, noticing his discomfort.

We don't have to do you this. You know that, right?

What's the other option? She asked him bewildered.

Go back to Tommy's. Be done with this whole damn thing.

She shook her head. After all we've been through, after everything I've done, it can't be for nothing. It hurt the girl to say this to the man. She knew that he had only her best interests in mind, that he wanted to prevent what had happened to his daughter from happening to her. But she had to do this. For both herself and the friends whom both of them had lost along the way. Her guilt that they had lived while the others had not would not let her rest even behind the safe walls of the man's brother's sanctuary until something was done to quench it. This was the only thing she could think of and it would be shame to turn back now after making it through the frozen hell. There was no halfway mark for her. Besides, she was certain that it would be just a few quick shots and x-rays and the Fireflies would be happily handing her back to the man's custody afterwards. The two of them would most certainly have the time to go anywhere after that. She walked past the man, pushing the door open and headed into the dark mouth of the stairway.

The man turned his head and looked back at the herd. The last giraffe was walking away into the wild growth. With it, the last grace that they had felt in the moment vanished. No more giraffes. Just another empty lot reclaimed by nature as the ruins of the old world surrounded it. Feelings of innocence and nostalgia replaced once more by the urgency and foreboding that had tugged at him each step of the journey before this brief but lovely intermission spent alone with the girl. Clenching his heart, the man breathed heavily and followed the girl down the stairs.


	7. A Midsummer Night's Dream

By Hilden B. Lade

* * *

><p>We're in the middle of summer. The sun sets latest on these days.<p>

I wait for hours at the watchtower, gripping my rifle and peering through the scope, even after the sun has long set. Dreading that any second now, a shot will ring out and the town… my town will be overrun. No, not by what made us this way. Out here, it's not the infected that we have to worry about. Rather… it's ourselves that poses the greatest threat. It's a lesson that I learned personally the hard way. Years ago, before I settled down as the rare optimistic veteran, I witnessed firsthand my own goddamn family turn into the monsters we tried so hard to escape from. All in the name of what, survival? But what was worth surviving for in the manner we did?

The bandits grow bolder and bolder with each day. They know we'd let them join our settlement peacefully, like we have do so for many of the stragglers that make their way to this part of Wyoming. But these twenty years have warped us all. They want everything we built here, and they want it now without having to share it with us. Just the other day we lost two of our best to an ambush on the outskirts of the dam.

But this night, the shot is never fired and the mass of attackers never arrives. I force myself to leave the post and stagger back to my home. Push myself past the front door and underneath wrinkled, stained sheets. My eyes hang open in the lightless dim of the bedroom, both the rifle and pistol at grabbing distance. Maria has settled in quicker than me, already deep in sleep. How I wish it would be as easy to sleep as that.

Another day, another night. It's hard to go on in a world full of shit like this, but if there's one smart thing my brother told me these past couple of years, it's that no matter what shit goes down you keep finding things to fight for. I don't know about him, if he's even still alive or clicker food, but I found something worth fighting for. Even with the lights of twenty-first century civilization dimming more and more every day, the end hasn't come yet.

We can make things better.

Hell, we already have, even if it's just a scarce starting percentage of what we're going to do.

With that reassuring though, I drift to sleep at last.

But my dreams are not as uplifting.

* * *

><p>Although they've been happening less and less since the first day we got the power running, I've still been having the nightmares often. Most of the time, I'm fortunate not enough to remember a thing about what happened in them when I wake up, but even if I can't remember what I dreamt about the memories of what really happened remain to plague me.<p>

This particular nightmare is a recurring one. Not one that I've had the pleasure of forgetting. It starts as it always does. The first snows of winter are starting to fall. We had been drifting through the Deep South for years now, and the first thing we learned was that winter was always going to be the hardest. And to make it through to the thawing of spring, you had to be goddamn prepared with the right supplies. But sometimes, even if you scavenged every inch within the whole county, you couldn't find enough to support your whole group. And that's when Joel decided to start hunting for their supplies.

It wasn't the first time Joel did one of these raids. But it was my first time joining them hunting. Joel kept me out of the first couple of raids, letting me stay behind at camp to guard our stash of shit. Many of the raids were against other groups of survivors as heavily armed or even better than we were. I was the only kin Joel had left, as we never did find out what happened to our folks, and after burying Sarah I think it would've broken Joel completely to bury me as well. That fact was the only thing that encouraged me to tag along as the two of us decayed further. Our fellow survivors weren't too happy. They knew what a good shot I was. Sometimes Joel joked, back in the early days when he was still capable of joking, that ninety-nine percent of our group's infected kills came from my revolver. Questioned why the hell was I twiddling my thumbs back at camp while they did the risky hard work? After being accused of playing favorites and faced with mutiny, Joel forced to accompany him.

The plan Joel had was straight forward. These were the early days, when the prospect of being holed up within the Quarantine Zones was hell of a lot better than sticking it out on the outside, even after FEDRA began to mow down everyone trying to get in. And in the early days, it was more than just a handful of folks that could bring themselves to help a stranger in need. The road that we camped near eventually led to Baton Rouge. Everything was in place, just waiting to be set in motion.

The bus was long, dangling from the precipice of a hill. We had fastened a manner of objects such as rods with the ends sharpened to act as rams to the grille of the bus. There were four of us ready to push the bus, waiting for the signal. Aside from Joel, there were also two others who had drifted along with us named Eric and Arne. They both were dependable fellows, but we could never tell what thoughts lay in their heads, whether it was a Mets cap or bushy beard thoughts were hidden behind.

"How long is it?" Arne asked, looking at an imaginary watch.

"Soon." Eric told him.

"Joel… are you so sure we just can't trade with 'em? I mean, from all your other raids, we got plenty of surplus"

"In this world, Tommy, there ain't no goddamn thing as surplus."

A female in our group, Shannon I think her name was, hidden behind a cluster of cars driven off the road into the forest. There were more of our group down there, waiting with their guns and killing devices fastened together from bottles or nails. And eventually, two pickup trucks came along. There was a small cluster of survivors riding in the back along the edges, supplies clustered in between them. They didn't seem to be carrying anything as heavy as us. With Eric's rifle, the toughest thing I could spot was a ten millimeter in a survivor's bandaged hand.

Shannon stumbled out from behind the cars. She had put behind several layers of rags underneath her shirt to give off the illusion she was pregnant. She stumbled forward with a fake limp, as if she was being chased from something and was badly wounded.

The first truck screeched to a stop. And that's when Shannon whipped out her shorty. And the others popped out from their hiding places. We saw the glass of the front window shatter accompanied by a symphony of screaming. The driver of the second truck pushed down the pedal hard. And then we pushed the bus down the hill.

* * *

><p>"Oh my god…" I recall muttering. A man clad from head to toe in body armor trying to usher two of the children away from the ambush met a fiery grave as one of our people flung a Molotov. Their screams in my nightmare, especially the kids, remain as vivid and loud as I remember.<p>

"Pleasepleaseplease" One of their survivors was trying to crawl away from Joel. His legs had been shot to shit. His arms frantically clawing for a weapon. "Youcantdothisyoucantdothis"

"I sure as hell am." Joel advanced on him.

"Kidsbacktherewehavekidsbackthere… please!" The man kept shouting at Joel, begging for their lives. "Take it, take everything! Just let us out of here! I have a fucking daughter, for God's sake!"

"Yeah? Well, tough luck. So did I." Joel raised his machete and the man's scream was cut short as his neck was split in half.

"God damn it, Joel." I cursed underneath my breath. I ran towards him, dodging bullets and obscenities.

"Ohmigod you monster!" A redhaired woman, holding a cowering little girl in her arms, cried at him as tears streamed down their cheeks. "You killed him! You killed him!"

Joel stood over them. He kicked the woman's pistol from her hands. She screamed. I could hear the bones break even from my distance.

"Please…" She pleaded with Joel. I was at his side now. There was scant space between the barrel of his shotgun and the two of them. She gave him the look. It was a look that I was to become accustomed to more with every raid that Joel brought me on. The last desperate gleam of the eyes before the head is smashed in.

Joel pondered their words, looking at the kid once. Then he opened his mouth. "You'll just come after us."

"Jesus Christ!" I cried out loud as he pulled the trigger and their blood splattered over our clothes.

"You bastards!" Shots. Joel and I both dove for cover behind an abandoned Toyota. Another one of the body-armor clad survivors, his right eye covered by a black eyepatch. "You killed us all, you fucking bastards!"

With another shot, I heard Joel grunt. A bullet caught him in the side. Eyepatch Man was getting closer. I hadn't killed anyone at all during the raid. Had I known, would I have still done it? But Joel had not become the monster of the story yet. He was still my big brother. The man who kept me alive. I still clung onto his words about survival. And right now there was a man out there trying to take out me and my family.

The shot hit him square in his other eye.

The man in the eyepatch lay sprawled on the bloodied road.

"Nice shootin', Eastwood." Joel tells me.

"Yeah, whatever. Try not to bleed out on me, Joel..."

"Hell. It's nothing a pair of pliers and anesthetic won't fix. They all dead, Tommy?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Let's see what they were carrying."

"Whatever you say, Joel." As I carry Joel up, I look around. Absolute fucking chaos. And worst of all, I felt that I was the only person here that was disturbed by the it all, from the burning shells of the pick-ups to the bullet-riddled bodies of children.

* * *

><p>"Good work, Texans. Shit we got is sure to last us through January." Eric patted me on the back as he and Arne walked past, carrying bundles of stripped clothing with them.<p>

"Are you sure that was goddamn necessary? All of this?" I scream at Joel as we carried boxes of looted goods back to camp. I point at the bandages on his torso. The blood on our clothes. The emptied cartridges. I glance back at the carnage one last time.

"It's your first hunt, Tommy. You'll get used to it."

"Fucking kids, Joel. We murdered fucking kids. For what? An extra can of tomato soup?"

"We're doing them a favor, Tommy. This world ain't a place for fucking kids anymore."

"Jesus Christ, Joel. You just blew them away without a bit of hesitation. What the hell are you thinking? Sarah would"

Without warning, Joel set down his crate.

Then he decked me. I dropped my box, shaking it open. Cans of soup rolled out as I forced myself up. I rubbed my cheek. I could taste blood, and I would probably get a canker sore, but no teeth were loose at least. I looked up at Joel. His eyes were downright murderous, full of rage and grief I hadn't seen since the day we buried Sarah.

"Don't you ever fucking dare use Sarah against me like that again."

* * *

><p>The nightmare then jumps ahead of time, a fast-forward montage of my downward spiral as I accompanied Joel. I never got used to the hunting, contrary to what Joel said. It just wasn't right. They were just people trying to eke their way in a world that no longer made sense. Despite everything Joel said about we being goddamn survivors just like them, I knew things were different. We were the bad guys in this story. And even as a kid, I never wanted to be the robber in the game. But I tried to stomach it. Joel was doing it for me, wasn't he? The two of us, brothers to the end, sticking it out. But what were we sticking it out for? It wasn't just me that was troubled about the hunting. Shannon killed herself, along with three others.<p>

I should've done it too. But I still couldn't leave behind Joel, even if he started to act weary of my presence with each raid…

And one day, when spring came around, I encountered them while scouting for infected. We had heard about them on the emergency radio as the cities fell under the cloak of quarantine. Joel had spat as he heard about them. Called them a pack of butterfly chasers that were all bound to end up riddled with holes or chewed up by a clicker. But as I set my gun down, surrounded by rifle tips, and stood amazed before the woman I would come to know as Marlene I knew that I had found another thing that Joel was full of shit about.

These were people that had come together and were going to try to make things good again.

And what did Joel do? He was just a fucking nihilist at this point. Wading from raid to raid through a sea of dead bodies, unfeeling and uncaring who he dragged to the bottom of hell with him. This wasn't the big brother I knew. Not the one who I spent the best summers of my childhood with reenacting the latest summer blockbuster in the backyard with or the caring hardworking father I went camping with. Joel had become just as bad as the military who shot down his daughter and the infected who had made hell a place on Earth.

In that instant, I knew what I was to do. I could redeem myself.

I announced to the group I was leaving them for the Fireflies.

Joel didn't take the announcement well. We argued back and forth. He called me an idiot, that I was dead to him if I joined the Fireflies. We were in a stand-off, both of us willing to shed the blood of family in that moment. I begged him to come with me. That I could redeem the two of us of everything we did. The world could be brought back to the way it was. Joel snapped back, saying that there was nothing to be redeemed. The world he knew was never coming back, and even if it did, it wouldn't be the same. And in the end, I decided that I finally put up with enough of his fucking nihilism and his fucking hunting.

"I don't ever want to see your goddamned face again."

With that, I begin to walk off.

But I then hear Joel say something. "You can bet your ass on that, Tommy."

And the last thing I hear is the shotgun fire.

* * *

><p>I wake up sweating. For a moment, I am gripped with the most purest of frights. My entire body is paralyzed. My nerves are panting but I can't get my legs or arms to move. But I continue to push. I tell myself that it was just a nightmare. I haven't see Joel in so many goddamned years and he never considered firing on me, even when I told him to go to hell. And with a breath of relief, I push my neck up. The dark of the room is strangely reassuring. Maria continues to silently sleep away next to me.<p>

I walk out of the house, putting on my jacket and strapping on my revolver. I look at what we have built, Maria and the rest of us. Joel said it could never be done, but here it is. A seed of the old world blossoming again. One day, it shall be safe. The bandits will be fought back for good, the power will never go out again. I've got a long day of work, no scratch that, probably long months of work ahead of me, but it will be done. I look forward to it. Perhaps when I finish the job, I will have finally redeemed myself and maybe then these nightmares will finally stop.

Then I find myself thinking of Joel. I think about the photograph I keep in a room at the dam. A portrait of a more innocent world, a grain of sand trapped in the middle of the hourglass. A smiling father with a triumphant little girl in his arms. A world that was taken from us piece by piece. My thoughts linger on my niece. Joel blamed himself entirely. But I was also my fault, I could have been faster, but he would never take my word.

Another thing that separated the two of us comes to mind. I could never stay mad at anyone, even him, long.

I find that I wish that both of them were here with me right now. But I don't think I'll ever be seeing Joel again. That he really will never show his goddamned face to me again. We headed in opposite directions. I still wonder what became of him and the group when I have nothing else to think about.

What's become of Joel is a coin toss. What happens to the last of us in this world goes only two ways. But I know Joel better than anyone else. And if I had to make my guess, he's still finding something to survive for, no matter how decrepit it may be.

But if he's dead…

I hope that if there is a heaven, and if he couldn't get in, they'd at least let him say hello to her once more.


	8. The Safest Place to Hide is in Sanity

By Brian

* * *

><p>Man, when the mushroom apocalypse hit, it totally was a bummer for me, cause y'know, I had been climbing my way to the top with no signs of stopping. Wait? You don't know who I am? Ah, I see. Yeah, everyone knew me back in the good 'ol days when all we had to worry about regarding mushrooms was that asshat who always ordered them on our pizzas and not worry about them eating us. When your pizza gets up and starts eating you, that's always a big big bummer. And with twenty years of that shit, I guess it's easy to forget about the age of YouTube and rock and roll.<p>

My name is… was, I suppose, Mitchell Greaves. I was the head of a rock band called Crispy Rotten Apple Pies, or C.R.A.P. as we spelled it out on our album covers. And I was on my way to becoming the King of Rock and Roll stardom, the John of a new generation, when all the shit went down… My agent assured me that I was bound to be the king, despite him saying that to every single band under our label. I'm sure he meant it most for me!

So the last thing I most clearly remember before the outbreak was playing our tenth show with sold-out tickets in a row in Texas. Yep, I remember it clearly. The four of us on the stage, pretending to play our instruments and me pretending to sing as someone in the back played the studio recordings on the loudspeaker system while our hipster scum audience cheered. Come to think of it, it wasn't even a stage. It was the trashcan in the backlot of a foreclosed Pizza Donuts restaurant. And our audience wasn't even hipsters. Well, at least not the type that can speak.

Once we came to, I actually was pretty depressed since we hadn't actually gotten any money from this concert. For some strange reason, everything just up and vanished. I mean, our groupies were gone, even the blow-up doll. Our agent and manager just up and vanished too, like with all our money that we had gotten from other shows. True, the most we had made on tours up to that day could probably buy out only the entirety of a dollar menu, but it was still our money, gained from our original music! I mean, all our songs were covers of songs by famous old bands with dead lead singers, but don't give me that jazz. We put our own unique spin on them!

Since we alone and stranded in Texas, me and the boys decided to split up for the rest of the day to go and find some coins and a payphone. Yeah, for some reason, all our cell phones were missing too and the only money we had on us were hundred dollar bills. We would've used them, but phone booths don't give change and that like blows. Furthermore, there ain't no dollar or card slots on phone booths.

I was heading down a dark alleyway, looking for someone to mug since there always is inexplicably that one vulnerable inexperienced fool who goes down these dark alleyways when I heard a voice. I whirled my head around and saw that it was a little girl, nearly half my size. I was going over the ethics of mugging this sweet looking little thing and was about to make my moves when she spoke first. Her voice was like an angel.

"Looking for something, big guy?"

"Um, if you're one of those, like that movie… no." I shook my head, made a big no-no with my hands.

"Of course not. But I do need some money, if you're willing to pay for it." She reached into her pocket, and pulled out a small pouch. Unzipping the drawstring, whatever was inside was shining gold. So bright, I couldn't make out what it was but its draw was so alluring that I could not bring my eyes away…

"What… what is that?"

She smiled. "Hardcore drugs."

I should've known better, but the glow… I was addicted to these "hardcore drugs" already and I hadn't even taken them yet. I should've asked her for a sample at least, but instantly I found myself ripping off all my money and jewelry and shoveling them into that preteen drug pusher's small tender palms.

She ran off thanking me, and talking about her dad's birthday or something. And I was left holding a small pouch of "hardcore drugs" in the alleyway.

And before I could regain control of myself, I had already sprinkled all the hardcore drugs over the pavement. Instantly, my face was buried in them, snorting away. My god… the feeling I experienced as I entered my ultrahigh… it was pure nirvana! The blood in my veins burned hot with the force of the golden ecstasy… in that moment, I knew that I was invincible and that anything could be done! And fueled by the power of these hardcore drugs, I set off to show the world who I was.

* * *

><p>When I staggered back to the motel room, all the teeth in the left side of my mouth had been knocked out and I had been stripped of all my clothing except my underwear. My bandmates were already inside, being pleasured by prostitutes or injecting heroin. Pft, heroin. After experiencing the sheer heaven of the hardcore drugs, I was never going back to that simple peasant trash.<p>

"So, anyone find any quarters?"

"No." They all said, looking rather guilty, even as the bass player was being blown off by the hired help.

"I guess this means we're stuck here then."

"But it's as any a fine place to be stuck in." The drummer said as he started to overdose. We ignored the white stuff dribbling out of his nose, and the sight of his eyeballs rolling back. We were all sure that the OD would just be a temporary impediment. And with that thought, we all went to bed.

* * *

><p>We were woken up by a crash in the night. Well, three of us. The hookers had all left, and our drummer looked kind of dead. I mean, he didn't even wake up when I kicked him in the balls. But we weren't particularly saddened by his passing. I mean, he was just the drummer, and they're kinda replaceable in this sort of business. Somebody had left the TV on, and it was switched to the news. The news lady was in front of something that was on fire.<p>

"We've received reports that victims of the infection show signs of increased aggression"

Then some police looking guys came running in screaming about gas leaks. Then the stuff on the TV screen blew up and faded into static.

"Well…" The guitarist muttered. "I'm sure that was nothing really serious."

"Yeah, news channels pull made up BS like this as stunts all the time. Even a YouTuber can make more realistic explosions that that." I added.

"Hey man, I think I have some coke left. You wanna snort it before we go looking for quarters again?"

"Nah, coke ain't rad anymore. I found something new… better than even new coke…" I said, remembering full well the bliss of hardcore drugs.

"Fine, then. Your los" There was a loud boom from somewhere outside. I staggered over to the window. Looked like someone was blowing stuff up for fun or something, as the fireball flared up and settled down. But as usual, I was sure that it was nothing serious. Then something else threw itself against the window. I jumped back. That thing shrieked, but we just stared at it. It was some nut in a hospital gown with red eyes and a bloody nose. It pounded its hands against the glass of our window, and suddenly it broke.

Wow, they really were going the full mile with this ratings stunt. The crazy person tumbled in, and instantly rushed at the person directly ahead of it. The guitarist, who was just stumbling out of his bed, stark naked. Instantly, the guitarist reacted and jumped at the guy with the deadliest weapon he had on him right now. He spread his legs open wide and with a twist, he whacked the window-breaker on the cheek with it.

"Check it out, man? Who's the boss?" Our guitarist flexed his muscles, of which he didn't really have any. He flashed a smile, his teeth all yellow and rotting. "Tell me you got all that on cameraargh!" The window breaker didn't take kind to be whacked in the face like that. He was trying to claw the guitarist and bite him, the guitarist holding the dude away only by a sliver. I was starting to think that maybe that shit on the TV wasn't faked after all.

"No matter... I can get it on camera myself!" The guitarist pledged, trying to take a selfie with his phone while trying to keep the crazy dude off of him at the same time. He wasn't having too much luck in either field.

"Man, the guitarist's fucked." The bassist said unmoved, just watching the guitarist struggle with the crazy dude.

"You think we should save him?"

"And put ourselves at risk? Please, what year do you think this is?"

"Well, if it was the drummer, you might have a point. But this is the guitarist we're talking about."

"Shit, you're right."

And with that, I grabbed the drummer's sticks. With them, I started smashing the crazy dude on the backside of his head harder than I had ever smashed anything before. When I had finished smashing, he was sprawled out on the carpet with his brains leaking out.

"Oh thank you, Mitchell!" The guitarist was kissing my feet.

"I think I finally figured out what's going on!" The bassist chimed in.

"What?"

"Zombies! And obviously, we have to- oh God, he's been bitten!" The bassist pointed wildly at a splotch of red stuff on the guitarist's shoulders.

"Wait, wait, wait!" The guitarist begged. "I… uh, keep ketchup packets on me for good luck! One of 'em must've popped and spilled while I was" The bassist punched him out.

"I'm sorry, guitar guy, but I watched that movie. Every time someone says that they're always the guy who's actually the zombie!"

"What are we going to do?"

"We put him down the most humane way we can… by beating his head in."

"Sure. Sounds humane to me."

I grabbed his guitar and handed it to the bassist.

* * *

><p>"Hmm…" I sniffed the splotch on his arm. I then noticed some packets tumbling out of his pockets. "Maybe it really was just ketchup."<p>

We got dressed and made sure not to step in any of the blood or brain fluid on the carpet. We grabbed the bass, since it was the only good instrument we had left and it sure would suck to have to buy a new one when we got back home since after all we already had to buy a new guitarist and drummer. I could hear fires burning in the distance, and cars honking. People streamed by the parking lot of the guitar, some of them holding children or bags of stuff. They were screaming and more crazy people were chasing them. Man, whatever those people had smoked I sure as hell was glad that wasn't what the weird girl had sold me.

"Man, we gotta get out of this place." The bassist said. He busted the window of a nearby car. The alarms started to beep, and some of the crazy dudes turned their attention to us. They started to run towards us.

"Wait, man."

"What, Graves?"

"I gotta go to the bathroom."

"Fine, make it quick."

"You wanna come with me? I mean…"

"No, I think I'll be fine. I mean, what's the worse that could happen?"

I did it quickly.

When I finished my business, the crazy dudes were already on the bassist. He screamed as they tore him apart.

"Do you need help?"

"No, I'm sure I'll be better in the morning! It's only a flesh wouaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" Well, shit. Did those bastards know how long it took for me to find all of them? Now, I had to do it all again. Sure, the drummer would be easy but it was no easy feat finding guitarists and bassists who weren't already taken! I quickly ran past the thrashing body and expanding trail of blood. I ran for a while through the city, and everything looked like it was on fire or being killed.

On my way out of the city, I think I saw these two guys off the path. There was this dead army looking guy nearby, and one of them was holding something in his arms and seemed to be sobbing. I didn't see what it was, but wow, what an unmanly wuss. I wondered what the hell was eating those two folks.

* * *

><p>Well, one thing led to another. I eventually found out that there were these fungi that were making people crazy, called Cordyceps. Suddenly, life didn't seem so awesomely radical anymore. Instead of playing instruments or singing, I spent all my days and nights just running around, trying to stay alive. Only doing it for real wasn't as catchy as the Bee Gees song. And again… one thing leads to another.<p>

Pursued by another pack of those things through an abandoned store, my group and I forgot to check for spores – causing us to run through an entire mist of 'em without our gas masks on. And just to solidify my fate, some of those "runners" caught up to us and managed to take a small bite out of my upper leg. That was like a total bummer, for all of us. Totally kicked the rad for good out of our lives. Well, out of their lives.

There were only enough bullets to account for them, not me. So I guess that was both a rad and not-rad moment.

By the time I stopped crying and cursing the world, which was about a week later, I noticed that something was off. Everyone I knew who got infected only lasted a day before the fungus made them crazy. But I had lasted a whole week, and the only thing that hurt was my lungs and tearducts from all the crying and cursing. How could I still be in control of myself? I looked at a mirror. Just like a runner, the infection was starting to show signs all over my body. I should've been struggling for my life right there, fighting futilely against the infection, but instead I could feel my mind fighting back. Then I remembered.

The hardcore drugs.

Of course.

They had allowed my mind to transcend to a higher plane of thinking and existence that allowed my mind and spirit to remain who I was even as my physical body was lost to the Cordyceps. Well, this seemed cool at first, but it really wasn't. You see, the cool part about being in a rock band is that you really got to know your buds, and having friends is a cool thing. But when you're infected, nobody wants to be your friend. Everyone "normal" simply shoots at you, and everyone like you is such an attention whore. I mean, I'm in front of them trying to talk B-ball, and she's just covering up her face mumbling about how much it hurts. Ok, when we became stalkers, it actually was sort of fun. For the first hour, at least. After that, perpetual hide and seek gets kinda lame-o. And when the fungus truly took effect, yeah, everyone besides me returned to the same old BS.

Being blind sorta sucked at first, but it turned out pretty cool once I got the hang of echolocation. I felt like Daredevil, my favorite superhero as a kid. If I still had a functioning dick, my my would it be in some rather intense places...

As I had little to do besides meander about for these past twenty years and occasionally eat, I settled down for a while and just thought, reflecting back on the life I led back when things were fab. I ultimately realized that I had wasted my talents and potential for a life of shallow hedonism. Well, no more. Even in this form, I realized I was still capable of great things. And as such, the old Mitchell who believed in his old gain was dead. It may have taken an infection for me to realize this, but I'll be damned if I failed now. The new me was one who would put the needs of others before himself! And this is how I got to this current sit- ow, will you assholes please stop shooting me? I'm trying to explain myself to you!

Alright, listen, I may not give off the most of initial appearances but if you'd just take the moment to stop and listen to m- Jesus Christ, that magnum round fucking hurt! Listen assholes, I may be kinda fungi-armored at the moment, but that does not mean I'm indestructible or invulnerable! Christ, is this how you regular folks repay altruism these days? All I tried to do was open that safe for you! I killed all those ugly military-soundin' fellows you guys called Fireflies for you, didn't I?

Look, I was just trying to help. Quit shooting me! Wow, a spiked stick. You people really have no limit, do you? And you didn't have to call me a bloater either! Yes, I spent a great deal of my life living off nothing but Pizza Hut and Mountain Dew, but I made a good deal to exercise afterwards! Some of us are conscious about our weight, you know! Wait… wait… OH FREAK IT'S FUCKING FIRE! ALRIGHT YOU BASTARDS, LOOKS LIKE I'M GOING TO HAVE TO SPORE YOU INTO SOME COMMON SENSE!

Hey you, don't you see what I just lobbed into your buddies over there? Quit hitting me with that stick! Look, I don't really want to hit you, but you're giving me no choice! If you would just politely sit back and listen to me as I explain myself oh look what you've done! I've accidentally lashed out and broken your neck. When will you people learn? You're all dead now, and I've accidentally burnt my toes.

But despite today's failure, my quest goes on. I will roam this land, searching far and wide, for people like these unfortunate folks who are caught in a jiffy. Like those who can't get a jar of pickles open or those who need to get a car moving. And using my immense strength and powers, I shall help them solve those problems. And the world shall finally see that not all us murderous mushroom heads are as bad as the papers make us seem! Um, just forget I totally murdered these eight folks back here.

For I am Mitchell Greaves, the Intelligent Altruist Cordyceps Man.


	9. Goodbye Blue Sky: O, Brave New World

This is the first multi-part story that will be published in this anthology. It should be about three or four parts long. The story parts will not be published in successive order - there likely will be some other non-related ones published in between.

By Hilden B. Lade

* * *

><p><em><strong>October 11<strong>__**th**__**, 2013**_

_I never did think of myself as the writing type, but hey, what else am I supposed to do to pass the time around here? The internet has been down for weeks, and we're running on reserve power that keeps going on and off, so anything that could put quite a drain on our generator like the DVD player is off limits. Didn't feel like reading anything, either. After all the shit that's happened since September, there's little solace to be found in escapism anymore. _

_Did some shifting around, and found a mostly blank notebook. Tore out all the pages that weren't mine, and found these pens. Got several, just in case one runs out. Don't have much more to say today. There's a strict lights out schedule, and the only people allowed out after that are the watch guys who hang out on the roof. And I'm not one of them tonight. _

_Just hope rescue's coming soon._

_Signing off, Michael* Reed. _

_*Mikey to my buds._

_**October 12**__**th**__**, 2013**_

_Spoke to RP today. He's the unofficial leader here. Responsible and a good leader against the infected, but a headstrong asshat as well. Asked him if we should continue holing up here in the school building. After all, we were bound to run out of supplies eventually if we didn't get a move on. And the area wasn't secure. For every room that we had cleared, there was bound to be another with infected lurking about. _

_Said no. What a surprise. Asked me where the hell we'd go and how'd we do it. Got me there. Suggested cars to drive to one of the Quarantine Zones. Yeah, he said. Good luck trying to find one that hasn't been taken yet or still has enough gas to make the trip to the cities._

_Tone got nicer at the end of our argument. He assured me that if we would hold out, the military would eventually arrive and send us packing to the QZ. Hope they do. Sick of canned food already._

_**October 14**__**th**__**, 2013**_

_Not a lot happened so far today. The same old milling about on the rooftops, looking at the sky to see if the cavalry has flown in yet. Skipped lunch. Wasn't really hungry, and like I said yesterday, sick of canned food. Watchtower duty may be asinine, but hey, at least I'm not on the infected patrol. This school feels like it was designed by a madman. More hiding places than one can shake a stick at. _

_Cloudy skies today. Don't feel good about it. Not a single glimpse of blue sky. To think that less than a month ago, I couldn't give half a rat's ass about what the weather was. But after everything has turned upside down, there's just something reassuring about the warm glow of sunshine. _

_Passed the time listening to some classical music on my smartphone. My ex-wife got me onto this stuff. I don't know what's happened to him. But I do know that this piece of electric shit is going to run out of juice soon. Then I'll only have myself to talk to when passing the time. Or maybe the other people here. _

_Aside from me, there are eight other folks here._

_RP – leader. If he wasn't so damn good at it, I think we would've hung him out as runner bait already. Bastard won't even tell us his full name. _

_Chris – former chem teacher. Knows what everything in the science department can do. Wants to start making some explosive traps for the infected, but RP says no. _

_Stevie – has some medical experience. Think she was in med school before the first infection and somehow wound up stranded here. Egotistical cunt though, thinks she knows everything. Won't be too sad if a runner tears her throat out or worse. _

_Dole – nice guy. Big and strong, can take way more hard luck than me. Brave BAMF, sometimes he charges the infected head-on with just a big stick to save ammo. Muscle of our group. Hope he manages to keep himself alive for a while. Keeps the campfire convos lively. _

_The Smiths. Who the hell are these two? Are they brother and sister? Mother and son? Father and daughter? Husband and wife? Different versions of one person from alternate universes? Mysterious duo… like to keep to themselves, don't bother with the rest of us unless it's fighting off infected or getting food. I'd find out more, but does it matter?_

_Craig – former high school football player. Youngest guy here, and it definitely shows. Keeps whining about how he wants doughnuts. Not putting in his share of the weight. If we hang RP, I definitely nominate this guy to be the next. _

_Laura – the angel of our group. Always putting the collective over the individual. Plucky, optimistic personality. Reminds me of… shit. Reminds me of Jessica. And whenever I write down her name, I look down at my ring finger. Has she kept hers? I wonder. And is Katie safe as well? She was so small the last time I saw her and Jessica has never fired a single gun in her life… what if… Oh god, suddenly I don't feel like writing anymore. _

_**October 17**__**th**__**, 2013**_

_No good news on the radio. Don't know what's worse – the static or the news when we actually pick up a broadcast. _

_Chris did show me something cool today. Smoke bombs, and there's enough crap lying around in the science department's closets to make more than just a fistful. Don't know how well they'll work against the infected though. _

_He promised to see if we have enough to make anything with a bigger boom. Almost asked him about the possibility of opening up our own meth lab, but decided wasn't the best time for pop culture refs._

_**October 25**__**th**__**, 2013**_

_Laura and Dole took me out to the school's track today. Used some dead runners as targets, fired with blanks. I think I'm getting better at hitting them fast and to the point. Started thinking about what was for dinner later. Canned pasta, canned veggies, canned soup, canned crap, yum-yum. Found myself sympathizing with that fucker Craig for a split second. _

_Later, after I had split a can of Linguini-Qs with Dole and joked around a bit about what the President was doing, RP stood up and made a big speech. After cutting out all the bombast, basically someone is going to leave our stronghold and explore the town for supplies to prolong us until the military comes. Real soon._

_He keeps saying they're going to come. But more and more days keep passing. And there's no sign of the cavalry over the hill. Not even a helicopter dropping leaflets with big smiling kitty pics on them telling us not to give up. _

_Maybe that's why Jessica left me and took Katie with her. Maybe I just can't keep up a smile long enough. I could've tried to tell her, to warn her, but I didn't want to. How could I be honest with even my own fucking wife if I could not be honest with myself?_

_**October 31**__**st**__**, 2013**_

_It's Halloween today. No tricks or treats around here, as far as I can tell. Stevie suggested singing the Monster Mash and when RP chewed her out for it, she called him an asshole and ran off to sulk on her own. I actually felt a twinge of sympathy for the bitch. But RP was unrepentant. Says that we have to focus on surviving first. Holidays can come later. _

_**November 10**__**th**__**, 2013**_

_Been a couple of days, a week at least, since I last updated this journal with my thoughts. Continued to spend time watching the skies and horizon, searching for a sign that somebody will come. I think we have managed to clear out all the infected from the immediate area. If we keep this quota up, maybe we will be able to liberate the school. But we need to gas masks first. _

_We all know there are spores in the cafeteria. Craig is convinced that there's bound to still be food we can use there. If it weren't for the one sliver of common sense in his thick skull, I'm sure he would've just rushed in by now. _

_**November 19**__**th**__**, 2013**_

_Ran out of canned pasta today. Looks like I've slurped down my last supermarket-grade spaghetti and meatballs for a long time. Down to just canned veggies and soup now. If we continue to consume our crap at this rate, we literally will be making canned crap to survive. Laura and I brought it up to RP. As usual, he brushed off our concerns. Assured us that most definitely what we currently have will last us until December. If we play smart, until rescue._

_Damn, that bastard. Again with the rescue. When will he open his eyes? It's pretty obvious at this point that it's going to be far longer than he thinks before rescue does arrive! We need to make some major changes if we're going to survive the long haul… the long winter. _

_Hmph, canned food. Even before I was trying to force myself to sleep every night in a fucking school room, before I was trying to drink Jessica and Katie from my memory, I had gotten pretty used to its taste. _

_Don't think there's much about it that deserves to be said. Let's just say I tried to go into business without any actual grasp on how business worked. I spent a long time struggling to find steady work, with Jessica paying out of her ass to keep the family afloat the whole time. I couldn't even afford to eat at the arches if she hadn't taken to wearing the pants. And eventually, I began to do questionable things. No wonder why my dear left one day._

_Don't think I'll have much thanks to give in the coming weeks._

_**December 1**__**st**__**, 2013**_

_The first day of December._

_Twenty-four days until Christmas. It was my mother's favorite holiday. The older I got, the more I noticed that it seemed to be the only day where she was truly happy. It was also the day she died. My father died soon after as well. But it was not from a broken heart. He was a true sob… I try not to think about how either of them went often. _

_If Santa hasn't been infected yet, I think I'll stick up late and try to hitch a ride with him. Maybe jack his sleigh and fly all the way to Vegas or someplace too arid to sustain the cordyceps. Ha-ha. _

_**December 2**__**nd**__**, 2013**_

_Had a nightmare last night. Steak dinner in front of me with a nice bottle of wine and a side of steak fries. Woke up before I could eat it. That counts as a nightmare, right? Felt extremely hungry when I did. Pit of despair growling in my stomach._

_I am really fucking sick of canned food. _

_**December 11**__**th**__**, 2013**_

_Somehow a whole pack of those things made it past the watch. Craig was exercising on the field when they spotted him. And unlike him, those things don't tire. They almost got him. Dumb shit got a whole bunch of blood on him when Mrs. (Ms?) Smith pulled the last of the runners off of him. RP looked like he was considering shooting him and so did Dole, but the shit put up enough of a bawl that he was bitten that we left him alone. _

_Still, I'm going to be watching him a bit more closely._

_I didn't kill a lot. Through the scope of my rifle, I focused on one of the runners. She looked like Jessica… had the exactly same style and hair as here. Even the build was right. But I couldn't tell if the face was her's. The infection had accounted for that. It couldn't have been Jessica. Jessica had told me before I signed the papers that she was planning on going out of state. Going west. To the shining Pacific Coast._

_All doubts put aside, it still took me a while to pull the trigger and blast her head off. _

_Laura asked me if there was anything wrong as we cleaned up the mess. Told her there was nothing wrong. Just the weather taking its toll. _

_We need to get some better clothing. I can feel it already. Winter will be brutal. _

_**December 15**__**th**__**, 2013**_

_Chris had an argument with RP. He stormed out of the school when all was done. RP says that he'll be back, but I'm not sure about that. I think that Chris was the first of us to go. At least before he left he gave me a slip of paper that showed the instructions for making bombs. _

_**December 21**__**st**__**, 2013**_

_We just hit rock bottom on canned soup. One of the generators went bust as well. And I'm kicking a lot more empty gas cans that I was last month. _

_We need to get more shit soon. I can barely sleep now because there's no fucking heating to compensate for the ever dropping temperatures. I think that even RP can see that we need to make an expedition into town now. _

_**December 24**__**th**__**, 2013**_

_Craig tried to get high off of some of the chemicals he found in a chem closet. He's the youngest of us here, so I suppose that he was bound to crack first. Stevie looked over him, but in her snooty as ever tone of voice, she says that there's not much we can do for him. I asked her if that was true, and she told me how should she know? She wasn't a doctor, just a student. _

_Bastard's like a vegetable. He's not moving or speaking. Only stimuli we get was when we hit him, and even then, the signs of life were only fleeting._

_RP mentioned using him as infected bait. I don't think he was joking. RP never gave off the impression as the joking type. _

_What a way to spend Xmas eve._

_**December 25**__**th**__**, 2013**_

_Today is the day. What a Christmas "gift." Someone is going to have to go into town to look for supplies. Just one… RP knows that it's going to be a dangerous fucking mission and he doesn't want to lose a lot of people. _

_He would've sent Craig, since we all hate the kid and wouldn't be too sad if he died out there, but Craig is still out of commission. We put our names onto pieces of paper and put them into Dole's hat. Dole shuffled them around a little bit. Then pulled out a slip of paper._

_That slip of paper was mine. _

_RP wished me good luck. Huh. Bet that bastard didn't enter in his own name. Handed a bunch of supplies. A backpack and a flashlight. A whole bunch of Chris' bombs. They didn't give me a rifle. RP said that the rifles were too vital for defense of the school's perimeter. Saddled me with a small pocketknife and an equally small pistol instead. RP, being the clingy cock he can be, didn't even give me a lot of ammo. _

_Who knows what's in town? None of us have been there since the infection broke out and there was no room on the evacuation choppers for us. I might not make it back. But if I do survive whatever's waiting in town, these shitters (plus Laura and Dole) better not run off on me before I return._

_I'm bringing this journal with me, but who knows how much chances I'll get to update it. Just in case - to Katie if they're out there, alive and scared. Don't worry. Daddy's scared too. Tell your mother, lovely-to-the-end Jess, that I'll love both of you to the end even with our separate ways and that I am sorry.  
><em>

_Well, that was cornier than I hoped it would come out. But hey. Like I said, I might not get the chance to say it in the future. _


	10. Scenes from the set of the TLOU PSA

By Brian

* * *

><p>"Joel, duck!" Ellie pointed out as she saw a glint in the second-floor window ahead of them. Joel quickly swore just as the bang of an unsilenced rifle sounded. Joel moved quickly, knocking over a table and ducking behind it. He could feel the wood start to splinter, a crack ringing as the bullet smashed into the table.<p>

"This isn't going to hold, Joel!"

"I know, Ellie. Got any bright ideas, then?" They could hear footsteps approaching the table.

"Man, we eatin' steak dinner tonight!" One of the bandits cried out. Joel could hear bullets being loaded into a chamber. By focusing his ears as the bandits closed in, Joel could gage that there were about seven of them at varying distances.

Joel quickly popped out from underneath and fired off a shot with his revolver, taking out a female bandit's eye. Alright, now there were only six of them at varying distances. A mild improvement, but an improvement nonetheless. And in this world, you take all the improvement you can get. Her scream was cut off as the sniper fired again, this time chipping off a bit of the corner.

"Good thing that fucker don't have too much practice." Joel said as he checked his backpack. With one well-aimed toss, he could take them all out in a great ball of fire, and sneak up on the sniper afterwards to finish him. Yes, all the ingredients were there. A rag, a lighter, and a fine sparkling bottle of Captain M- wait, where the hell did the bottle of rum go? He certainly hadn't drunk it. Joel knew the importance of managing resources for the long haul.

"Ellie?"

"Yes, Joel?" There was something wrong with Ellie's voice.

"Ellie, you got any spare bottles of booze on yo- Good God!" Joel cried as he looked as Ellie. She was chugging down the bottle of rum, and her eyes were cracked red. And before Joel could do anything, Ellie tossed the bottle over their cover. A bandit was crying and screaming something about his nuts and broken glass as Joel looked at Ellie in horror. She then proceeded to take out several of Joel's "supplements" and swallowed them dry.

"God help me…" Joel gasped in despair. "My ward is a druggie!"

"No, Joel, that was my last bottle." said Ellie with some guilt in her voice. "But don't worry Joel, you have the next best thing… me!" Ellie then reached into her backpack and ripped out a whole bundle of conveniently placed cocaine, and proceeded to snort down the whole shebang.

"Ellie, stop! What the fuck are you doing?"

"Joel, cocaine is my new god and I am to be the human instrument of its will!"

Joel tried to wipe the coke from her face, but Ellie shoved him off. She hopped over the barricade, screaming. "Come at me, hic you motherfuckers!"

"Ellie, stop! You aren't actually invincible, it's just the crap talking!" Joel cried, pleading with Ellie, but she did not listen.

"Aah! What the fuck is that thing?" All the bandits cried as they fired all their ammo at Ellie, wasting it as Ellie swiftly dodged all the shots fired at her with the power of the influence. No, Ellie wasn't under the influence nor was she above the influence… she was the influence! With fists of fury powered by the trinity of roid-rage, cocaine, and booze, Ellie reduced each of the bandits to flaps of skin as she shattered their skeletons into nothing but sub-micro atoms with the power of her punches!

"Nooooooo! Please, show mercy!" begged the last bandit as he stood on his knees crying and kissing Ellie's feet. "We were only joking about cutting the two of you up and puttin' ye into our stew!"

"Then you shouldn't have said that!" Ellie proclaimed. "After all, it ain't true what they say when sticks and stones break your bones, but words can never hurt you. Words go beyond the lines of age and stick around forever, and the bad words do hurt! By the great power of the flaming snow, I avenge all the people of America who have been hurt by words!" Ellie ripped out a rocket launcher from her backpack.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" screamed the bandit and sniper as Ellie fired the rocket launcher, first burning the bandit into ashes and then blowing up the building, burying the sniper underneath a hundred floors of stuff.

"Alright, who's the fucking boss now?" Ellie proclaimed as she pumped over the slain bodies of her foes. Joel slapped his palm on his face. "Not again…" He mumbled.

On cue, Neil Druckmann stepped out from the behind the camera, where he had been filming the scene. "Cut! Goddamn it, Ellie, how many times do I have to tell you that you get killed when charging out there? We're supposed to be showing the video gaming kids of United States of America that doing drugs is bad for them, not that doing drugs will turn them into fucking Wonder Woman! That speech didn't help, either. This is an anti-drug PSA, not an anti-bullying PSA! The latter will void the payments!"

"I'm sorry, Neil." Ellie shrugged. "But I can't help it… it breaks Joel's heart just to see me fake-killed, and well, to be honest, you Naughty Dogs aren't just paying me enough for this clownshow for me to take it seriously. Besides, when we tried to do it the serious way, those bandits were right in front of me and poking me with their guns, and yet they kept missing their shots."

"Ellie's got a point." Joel said. "I remember when we were filmin' our death scenes for the game last year, and when I did that with the bandits, they always got me. But these sons of bitches, they couldn't shoot a giant wall to shave their lives. Where'd you Naughty Dogs get them, the bathroom at a burger joint?"

"Well…" said Neil guiltily.

"You cheaped out, didn't you?" Ellie sighed.

"It turned out Charles Bronson was actually dead, Bruce Lee was actually just an impersonator named Bruce Leo, and Clint Eastwood was too fucking expensive." Neil explained. "So yeah, to cut a long story short, we just grab a couple of guys from Stormtrooper Academy or Redshirt School each time we try to film this PSA… but since you keep fucking it up, Ellie, they're eventually going to catch on to us!"

"Why the hell are we even doing this?" Ellie asked. "I mean, I understand it's for the children and all, but…"

"But what, Ellie?" Neil asked. "You know that we are getting paid a fortune for this PSA. PSA that we can use to fund the movie, the PS4 version of the game, and one day… the sequel…"

"Sequel's not even in our contract, Neil. Why should we care? The next-gen cut is going to keep us made so long we don't even need sequel bucks." Joel said. "And besides, why the hell are we the ones doing the Sony Computer Entertainment PSA?"

"You guys are the newest stars… the kids look up to you the most."

"What the hell? Kids aren't even supposed to be playing our game!" Joel and Ellie cried out in unison. "There's a reason there's a big fucking M on the front cover, Neil! You expect us, a pair of hardened murderers, to make a profound statement about drugs and not look like a total bunch of hypocritical sell-outs while doing it?"

"Hmm… this seemed like a good idea at the time…" Neil said.

"Just use the sackboys, Neil!" Joel cried. "Everyone loves the fucking sackboys! Why else would they still be charging two bucks for a single sackboy costume if everybody wasn't buying them?"

"The sackboys need stop-motion, Joel! Do you know how long that's going to take?" Neil cried back. "Just get back onto the film set and this time film it right!"

"I'm tired of this, Neil." Ellie protested. "I've probably killed an approximate number of bandits close to the population of Wyoming from filming these takes alone. Do you think I actually enjoy killing all these people?"

"You know, I've never thought of that…" said Neil. Joel then got in his face. "Listen to me, Neil, you bearded punk. We ain't some sociopathic wisecracker who'll gleefully mass-murder everybody placed in his path. We tired of this shit, and quite frankly, I'm taking Ellie and calling quits to filming."

"Wait… Joel… Ellie… please don't leave us! How else are we support to continue our naughty stardom without the two of you? The comics, the movies, none of it could've been possible without you!" Neil Druckmann fell down onto his knees, begging, but the two ignored him. "We can't get fly in Nathan to do it. He's still serving prisontime for the day he burned down all of L.A. for kicks when buying his lunch, and as for Jak and Daxter, they're pretty fucking bit-" But Joel and Ellie ignored Neil's words, simply walking towards the exit.

"C'mon, Ellie, before we get back to Jackson, I'll buy you an ice cream soda… maybe take you to see a ball game."

"That sounds great, Joel. Can we find a video arcade afterwards?"

"Oh, Ellie, Tommy already has gotten you something even better than a video arcade. It's just waiting to be unwrapped when we get back…"

The doors to the film set shut as Joel and Ellie walked out.


	11. Family Matters

By Kaiser Caesar

* * *

><p>"Aw, crap!" Charlie Lester gasped as he saw what was coming towards her, pursuing the ground team, or what was left of them at least. "What the hell did you bastards run into?" He muttered to himself as he snatched his sidearm and began to fire at the horde of infected. The infected were all in various stages – some still vaguely human while others had been turn apart inside out by the fungus. And it sure as hell looked like they were being pursued by the entirety of the QZ's infected.<p>

"Charlie! Billy! Get the bird running!" The commanding officer shouted as the near-decimated platoon of soldiers reached the helicopter. She quickly escorted the people they had been sent to rescue, scientists and doctors, onto the helicopter. It hadn't been expected, this mission. It was located so far out of their normally authorized zone outside their own quarantine zone in Springfield. But no one had expected that Chicago would collapse so easily even with all the damn signs – fucking Fireflies or worse must've had something to do with it.

"Is that all?" Charlie shouted as he and his co-pilot rapidly tapped at the controls. The blades of the helicopter began to whirl. The soldiers shoved the last of people in white-coats on board, and resumed firing at the incoming infected. The infected were falling like tree-leaves in windy weather, but more kept surging over the corpses. It soon became clear that bullets wouldn't get them out of here.

"Almost ready, but there's not enough room for all of you! Mission planning fucked up! Somebody has to stay behind!" Charlie shouted to the CO. To make matters worse, some of the infected were starting to reach the helicopter. Charlie swore and shot one of them who almost got onto the open chopper.

"Then someone will have to go down with the fucking ship!" One soldier, anonymous to Charlie, fought on, and quickly emptied his automatic, down to fighting the mass of infected with his sidearm and blade. Almost instantaneously, several bite marks made their way into his flesh. But it didn't matter. The commander had spent his entire life preparing this moment.

The helicopter rose into the sky, ferrying the remaining soldiers and their rescued quarry away. The infected that were climbing aboard were quickly shaken off by the helicopter, falling to their deaths, or chopped up by the blades.

Below them, as the helicopter disappeared from sight, the infected swarm over the unknown soldier. He died laughing, even as a clicker bit into his throat, as his last resort was unpinned moments before he fell.

"Don't worry… we're getting out of here in one piece. I'm not losing anyone else today…" Charlie muttered to himself as he steered the helicopter back towards Springfield, ignoring the sounds of the explosion and the cries of the infected in the background that were ringing in his eardrums.

He breathed a sigh of relief. They were out of the pot…

* * *

><p>"Hey Billy, take over for a few minutes willya?" Without waiting for the co-pilot to answer, Charlie left the pilot's seat and headed to the back, where the surviving soldiers and other personnel of importance were huddled in relative glumness.<p>

"Charlotte…" He asked the CO, a stone-faced woman with black hair. "Are you all right?"

"What the hell do you think? I just watched over three-quarters of my buddies get chomped down by those things or taken down by straggler hit-and-runs…" Her voice was somewhat choked, although hidden under a mask of anger.

"What happened in the QZ?"

"Stragglers took over, as you may know. Knew we were coming. Entire place was trapped, and the fuckers knew the ins-n-outs much better than any of us… even had traps to lure infected towards us placed in the bombed-out perimeter… made the mistake of fighting them openly… thought it would be easy"

Charlie leaned over, and put his hand on his twin sister's shoulder to ease her, but she shook it off.

"You were here in the fucking chopper away from all the danger. You think I want your arms on me?" She snapped. Then her tone lessened as she caught hold of her tongue before more could be said. "Um, sorry. I appreciate it, Charlie, but right now… I need some time by myself, alright? I've just been through hell… wcan hug later…"

"Alright then…" Charlie waved bye to his sister but she did not wave back, staring down at the floor of the copter. Charlie looked at the scientists and doctors, who were huddled in their own little circle in the very back. What exactly had they been doing in the heart of the QZ that had been so important to warrant their rescue? Was it the miracle cure? Or some deadly new chemical or biological weapon to use to quell civil unrest? Charlie didn't want to know. He had enough business on his plates as it were. He and his sister had been very close before the outbreak but as the years went by they drifted apart. They fought over so many things now. Ethics, beliefs, dreams, the list goes on. And sometimes these fights weren't just with their words.

Lost in his thoughts, Charlie didn't hear the large crunch and snap of things breaking as something huge hit the chopper blades. But soon, his thoughts were drowned out by the chorus of frantic screaming and cursing as Billy struggled to regain control in vain of the helicopter as it went down in the woods.

* * *

><p>She could smell smoke. Wires sparking. Someone was setting off fireworks in her head. Groaning, her vision cleared. As she blinked, she saw that Billy had been impaled through the chest by a branch. Christ, the first thing Charlotte thought, that could've been Charlie if we hadn't been milling around in the back.<p>

"Charlie?"

"Charlotte? Oh my god… what happened? What… what's all this blood doing here?"

"The chopper crashed! Charlie, are you alright?" Charlotte asked, rushing over to her brother, ignoring the aching all over her body. She mucked over the dead bodies of the other soldiers and workers, finding him pinned underneath a plate of metal and a surviving scientist cowering nearby.

"Hngh!" Charlotte grunted as she lifted it off of her brother. To her alarm, he was bleeding. Their friendship had become strained to new lows ever since the beginning of the pandemic, but God help her, she was frightened by the possibility she'd have to bury another family member.

"'ine. I can walk."

"No, you're not. You're limping."

"When has that stopped m"

"Ohfuckohfuckohfuckitcantbehappening" the scientist continued to cry. Charlotte slapped him, trying to get him to focus. They would need all the able hands they could use to get the hell out of this place alive. Where the hell were they? Who the hell shot them down? So many questions that weren't answered.

"Help me carry him." She ordered the scientist. The scientist, in no position to negotiate, obliged. "Is there anyone else alive?" Charlotte muttered. "No." replied Charlie. So much for not losing anyone else today, Charlie thought. He told the scientist, "Gather anything else you think we can use." as he was lifted out.

They were walking away from the wreck of the helicopter when they all heard the rumbling of a motor approaching.

"Fuck. RUN!" Managing the heavy, cursing body of her brother, Charlotte and the scientist chugged towards cover. It was a log, large enough to hide their sitting bodies as they pressed against it. Two vehicles, motorcycles, rumbled into the clearing where the helicopter had crashed and stopped. Charlotte peeked her head over, and quickly ducked it underneath.

"Who… what…"

"Fireflies." Her voice grim. They hid, their heartbeats slowed and tense. They could hear the Fireflies chatter as they sat silently, clutching the weapons they had managed to retrieve from the wreck.

"That was overkill, wasn't it, Evan?" One of the Fireflies was talking.

"Listen, Mac, I don't make the fucking plans. And frankly, I don't fucking care."

"The mission was that we bump off the soldiers and extract from the scientists and docs anything that we can send to Colorado. Recruit anybody with a bit of common sense to be shipped there as well. A rocket launcher kinda reduces the success rate, doesn't it? Idiots… Geeze, look at this mess. I don't think there's anything left."

"How many rounds do you have in your pistol?" Charlotte whispered into Charlie's ear. He checked. "Only five. Should be enough to take care of these guys, do you think?"

"Maybe, but maybe we should just wait for them to go away. My rifle's empty and I don't have much left in my sidearm either… I do have a grenade on me, though."

"What about you?" She asked the scientist. The scientist did not answer. He was gripped by fright. His brow was sweating, and he seemed to be shivering. All he whispered was the words ohgodohgodidontwannadie over again.

"You think we should head back to camp?" Evan's voice said.

"Hmm… wait, willyoulookatthat. Blood trail. Fresh."

"Should we follow it?"

"Let's call back to the camp and ask for the sniffer dogs."

At that moment the scientist burst out from their hiding spot before either of the twins could react to stop him. The two Fireflies cocked their guns, but there was no sound of gunfire following. They were serious about recruiting scientists, it seemed.

"Who the hell are you?" Mac.

"My name is Edgar. I'm… I'm a scientist. I was in the chopper before it crashed. Everyone's dead but me."

"No other survivors." That fucking turncoat. Charlotte cursed silently. If she could run out there and strangle him right now… but she couldn't. She'd be dead in a heartbeat and there'd be no one to protect Charlie. Isn't that what they promised each other at the start of the Pandemic? That they were brother and sister, and that they'd look out for each other. That's why they stuck together even when all their childhood friends had defected to the Fireflies or why they managed to forgive each other after the worse arguments.

"What sorta scientist are ya?" Evan.

"Physicist. Graduated from my class at Chicago U with top hon" The sound of a gun firing and a body hitting the dirt ground.

"Too bad we was looking for biologists or physiologists, kid." The sound of Evan spitting. A wave of relief washed over the twins. Maybe, with the scientists dead, the Fireflies would move on. "C'mon, Mac. Let's get back to base and grab a bite or better. Serena hasn't kissed me for a month…"

"Maybe if you'd wash that fucking beard of yours… hey. I don't think we're done here."

"What?"

"Look at our poor physics boy here. Aside from your gunshot, there's nothing on him that could've made those bloodmarks we saw earlier. We ain't done hear. Call for the dogs."

"Hey sis, that grenade of yours? Use it." Charlie whispered.

"For the first time in years, Charlie, I think you have a perfectly good idea." She unpinned her grenade and tossed it into the clearing. First, there was shocked muttering by the Fireflies. Then the sound of someone diving. Throwing his body onto the grenade to save his buddy. Then the grenade blew up, right after the twins clapped their hands over their ears. Still, there was some ringing in their drums as Charlotte peeked over the log. One of the Fireflies was in pieces, dead for good. The other, had lost his legs. A trail of intestines was behind him as he clawed his way towards the walk-e-talky.

"Charlie, it's safe to come out." Charlotte's brother joined her as she climbed over the log. The Firefly noticed them. "Fuck you…" Mac gasped with noticeable difficulty. Charlotte kicked the radio away from him.

"Neither of you's gonna get very far." Mac rolled over, his tone of voice turning fatalistic, accepting that he was done for. "We own these woods."

"Not a very good job of owning them, I see."

"This is for Billy."

"And my buddies back there."

Two shots ended Mac's life. One from each twin.

Charlotte searched her personal provisions and eventually she found her first-aid kit. She took to attending to her brother, despite his claiming that she would need it more than him. Before long, his bleeding parts had been covered up by a wrap of bandages. She gave him a small shot of morphine to slow the pain. "There… that should stop the bleeding."

"Are we going to stay here?"

"No, I think we should get out of this place."

"How are we going to get back to the QZ? We have no idea where we are, no map, no vehicles…. God…"

"I don't know."

* * *

><p>After about two hours of wandering deep into the woods, the twins stopped and set up camp. The pitch-black nightsky was hidden by a thick canopy of treetop, but their flashlights cut a path through the darkness. If anything, Charlie was most grateful for the flashlight than anything else he carried on him. Light was hope… a beacon that pushed away the dread and furtive mysteries that dwelled in the dark. A mid-size clearing. With scant amounts of wood, he and his sister worked on getting a fire started. As the flames weakly sputtered, they talked.<p>

"You want that hug now?" Charlotte asked.

"Some other time… right now I'm too fucking scared to even think about anything." Charlie confessed. For all he knew, the Fireflies could be drawing in on them right now.

"We'll make it out of here."

"You really think that, sis?"

She didn't reply to that question. She instead asked him another one. She wanted to keep her mind of the situation as well. They were running low on ammo, and what little other supplies they had on them wouldn't last long. The goddamn military hadn't even supplied them with the shake-n-charge battery flashlights before sending them out on this sortie. And all alone, surrounded by enemies and who knows what else if the dead Firefly was to be believed. "Are we still friends, Charlie?"

"Why are you asking this? Of course we are."

"What about the time I nearly strangled you?"

"You were drunk, alright? We were both drunk and y'know, kinda fucking stupid cause of that. You shouldn't be so hung up on that one incident. It's been like two years…"

"I know, but even after I got sober, I still remember why we were arguing in the first place. And let me tell you something… every time we ever tried talking about it after that one day, I wanted to punch you. And worse."

"I know. You don't think I haven't felt the same?" Charlie sighed. "You know, sis, why don't we get it out there right here, since we might not get the chance to do it tomorrow, in the future, or even in a couple of hours?"

"Fine. Wanna start, then?"

"I love you, sis. You've always been someone that I could look up to. Why do you think you were… I mean are, the commander of your own unit and I'm just the guy who flies you places? But you can also be a real hard bitch… even more apparent now that the world's turned upside down. Do you care about anybody besides me and you? Like that night you were on patrol…"

"I care about you Charlie, but for someone who survived the first year and joined the military, you still seem fucking naïve. I worry… you think that we can be superheroes or something and save everybody. Do you think that stragglers deserve to be saved?"

"Well, saving people seems preferable to gunning them even when they're unarmed down, doesn't it?"

"The rules of the world have changed, Charlie. Selfish bitches like me who only care about their inner circles, we last the long haul. People like our parents who tried to maintain that altruist spirit – the world schooled them pretty quickly. You want to die, Charlie?"

"Sometimes, the more I take a look at just how badly things have changed or are changing, yeah, I kinda do. But…"

"Afraid of death?"

"Not that. What about you, Charlotte? You were pretty choked up by the death of our parents at the hands of those junkies. What would you do if there was nobody close to you left? I doubt you ever considered the troops under your command your friends… just numbers and records to brag about to the other big guns in the QZ…"

"I haven't thought about that. Maybe we just need each other." The two sat in silence, staring at each other. The fire had grown weaker.

"Well, I don't think we learned anything new today." Charlie sighed. "I'm tuning in, then. Do me a favor, Charlotte, don't do anything to me in my sleep alright?"

"I'll keep watch then. I'll kick you real hard when it's time to switch."

"I sleep light. Nightmares and stuff."

"You know what I mean."

* * *

><p>A few days later.<p>

The situation had grown grimmer. They had left the forest behind, finding a cracked countryroad littered with abandoned vehicles and the skeletons of the decayed dead. No Fireflies or infected had been encountered – but it didn't matter. If they didn't manage to find anything to eat soon, starvation was bound to get them.

This morning they had split their last can of rations. He insisted that Charlotte take it all, but she had reprimanded Charlie to stop being such a fucking do-gooder. It would do him or her no good if one of them dropped now.

Where were all the fucking animals? Not even the rats were around. God, he felt so hungry. The rations hadn't done anything for either of them. If there was a rat right here, he'd probably eat it raw straight to the blood-stained bones. And vomit afterwards and question his hindsight, but the feeling of true, desperate hunger warps judgment.

"Caw, caw!" A crow landed on the hood of a rusted Toyota and peered at them. That fucking crow! Charlotte thought, mocking the two of them like this. She ripped out her pistol and fired. The crow fluttered away, landing somewhere in the woods far away. They could hear caws echoing from wherever it was.

"What the fuck was that for?" Charlie asked.

"Food, you dumbass! God, do you have a brain or what? You should've been covering me! Shooting him if I missed! Charlie, were you daydreaming for the entirety of our training back at the boarding school?"

"You know, sis, if we ever get back to the QZ, maybe I'll bribe a smuggler to find us a PS3 with one of those fighting games… let us settle our differences in a safer manner…."

"If you're going to do nothing but joke around, I might cut these family ties and… you can fill out the rest like a Mad Lib."

"I'm sorry… just trying to lighten the mood."

"Yeah, when we find something to eat, maybe then you can lighten the mood."

Then they heard the sound of an oncoming motor from the direction they were walking. Far away, only a speck was visible on the horizon.

"I think they got a big car, if that motor's to be believed. Do you wanna try to hitch with the" Charlie's sentence was cut short as Charlotte clamped her hand over his mouth, using her other arm to put him in a hold, and hurried him behind a derelict cargo truck. She clasped her brother tight against her, and he quickly stopped squirming when he realized Charlotte wasn't going to release him anytime soon. "No. I don't want to hitch with them." She hissed with a whisper in his ear. "Take a peek, brother."

The rumbling of the motor got louder. And the sound of exhaust belching joined the chorus, alongside the notes of rolling wheels. A pick-up truck, with pillars of black smoke coming from its pipes and headlights shot out, rolled past them. Riding on the sides were several men and women in makeshift armor, clutching stained blades cobbled from bits and pieces of everything or rusting rifles. Mementos decorated the truck. Strapped to the hood were several human skulls and decapitated clicker heads. Crude armor fastened to the sides. Sitting in the middle of hood, bound and gagged or dead, were prisoners of these people. Some were Fireflies. Others were unlucky drifters who were in the wrong place at the wrong time or made the choice of trusting the wrong people. They could hear them talk, mock their prisoners. As the pick-up passed the cargo truck, Charlotte held her breath, praying that none of the stragglers would notice the two soldiers huddling in fear.

"You see, Charlie? That's why I don't trust people as easily as you do."

* * *

><p>"Just because some people are shit doesn't mean we have to label them all as crap." Charlie insisted. The twins had settled down for a quick stop. The sun was starting to set, the blue sky growing darker.<p>

"For crying out loud, asking questions or hesitance is what's going to get you killed. We aren't teens with meaningless fears anymore. It's been nearly ten years since that world ended. Why haven't you learned it yet?"

"Maybe it's because unlike you, I can believe that things can still change. Even if the old world's gone for good, that doesn't mean we can't try and help restore things to be a little like they were when everything was good."

"Go on believing that then, Charlie. You'll find out soon enough the truth." Charlotte sighed.

They heard footsteps. Charlotte whipped out her gun and nearly fired it. But Charlie intervened and knocked it from her hands before she could finish pulling the trigger. Standing in front of them, almost as shocked as they were, was a grimy man. He was dressed in padded clothing, with a rifle slung around his shoulder.

"Woah, easy there, Oakley!" The man said.

"Who the fuck are you?" Charlotte demanded, glaring at both him and her brother. Her eyes darted towards a pouch saddled on him. There was sure to be something they could use that he had… the only thing standing between them and that stuff was the man. Her fists clenched.

"My name is Andy… I live in a small settlement just a short walk from here."

"What sort of settlement?" Charlie asked before Charlotte could speak.

"A small farm. We got basic electricity and a barrier erected. Not a lot of us currently, but we do got a few kids and every one of us pitches in the for the community. Surrounded by forest. Pretty well hidden." He motioned to the trees all around them. "Good thing, too. There are some not so friendly folks who hide out in a nearby town and prey on anybody they can find. I was sent out to track them, see if they trying to make any moves on our zone, but I also see that you too have been through a bit of a rough spot. Maybe I can take you to our ranch, let the two of you regain your bearings. None of us have any hard feelings towards you army folks."

"It sounds too good to be true." Charlotte muttered.

"C'mon, Charlotte. You've gotta learn at some point to start trusting somebody besides yourself."

"You think any of what he's just said is true?" She said to her brother. "Listen to me…"

"No, listen to me for once in your life. I know that no matter what you say, you aren't just going to leave me on your own. And I'm going to go with him. So, make up your mind. You wanna come with me, bite the bullet? Or do you wanna continue on this road to who knows where, all alone?" Charlie replied. And he turned to Andy. "Alright, we'll take you on your deal."

"Knew you would. You won't regret it." Andy smiled.

Charlotte sighed and followed the two men into the forest. The whole walk she kept her gun in her hands, ready to be used, while her brother's firearm remained holstered. He stuck up a lively conversation with Andy, but she did not bother joining in the talk. Why bother getting to know a bunch of folks you were going to be leaving real soon anyways? Not like they'd actually do anything as dumb as join their ranch, enclave, whatever. What were the odds of that happening?


	12. Goodbye Blue Sky: No Good Morning

**Due to an unfortunate outbreak of writer's block at our offices, we here at JSE regretfully bring you the news that from (5/5/14) we will be on temporary but indefinite hiatus until we can acquire some vaccines for this anti-virus.**

**Sorry to all our readers! - Hilden, Jack, & rest of The Koo-Koo Zoo Crew  
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><p><em><strong>December 25<strong>__**th**__**, 2013**_

_Update to the earlier entry. Made it into town just as the sun was starting to set. And almost instantly the place seem like it was gonna do everything it could to make me crap my pants. Like the set of a horror film, except all the carnage and corpses lying around are for real. And the real stuff, once you see it, is tons more frightening than anything Hollywood or even a guy with a camera and twenty bucks could have cooked up. I'm surprised I actually didn't let it go. _

_Town with littered with those things, like it always is in the zombie movies. One behind every corner, a pack on your back, and there doesn't look like there's any safe place to run to. I thought my lungs would explode, or my legs would just fall off and refuse to start running. But I couldn't stop. Because I'd rather deal with the pain each step brought than feel what it felt like at their hands of those things._

_Death._

_I don't know how I got away. Guess even those things have a limit to how fast they can run. When I regained full control of my bearings, I was in front of a little motel. Snuck into the main office. Dead guy in there and looked like he was there long, so place smelt like shit, but none of those things at last. Whole bunch of keys just hanging on the wall, never to be used again. Well, except for today. Ha. _

_Barricaded the door but it won't last in case of a prolonged siege. Well, this expedition is off to a good start so far. Signing off, yours truly._

_**December 26**__**th**__**, 2013**_

_Early morning. No breakfast for me. If one of those things hears my growling belly, well I guess I can only blame myself. And that bastard RP. Still too dark out. Should be at least an hour before the sun rises. But I can't go back to sleep. Too much difficulty falling to sleep. And when I do, the dreams make me wish I hadn't. _

_So if I ever find myself in a position like this again, I'll just write in this journal. Maybe I can bore myself to sleep or pass the hours quicker doing this. What will I write about? Just anything that comes to mind. First thing comes to mind is that I haven't spent a whole lot of time talking about myself. I mean, why should I? Not like anyone's ever going to be reading this but me. But regardless, here I go._

_My name is Michael Reed. I was born on May 25th__, 1977. Childhood was less than pleasant outside of the rosy memories of Transformers and bad music on MTV. My father was a veteran of the Nam who never really came home. He had lost half of his old circle of high school friends in a hellish jungle overseas, and came home to a society that he felt abandoned his generation. My mother was a nurse he had met in the war. I'm grateful for mother. If it hadn't been for her, father would've taken out the majority of his rages on me. _

_The rages could less and less frequent the older dad got and one day they just stopped altogether. But I remember those rages clearly. When I would lie huddled underneath my covers at night in fear, trying to go to sleep, trying to drown out the sounds of his shouting that would give way to the noise of flesh hitting flesh. But the sobbing would keep me awake all night. _

_I wanted to stand up for her. But I was afraid. Afraid of him. _

_As I got older I pleaded for the two of us to pack what little we had and run away. To somewhere safe. Where he would never find us. But mother refused, despite the scars and bruises and more he had done to her. What he was doing to her. She insisted that he had been good back then. I never understood her. Was it an acceptance of the hopelessness of her life? Had he beaten the will to hope from her? Or perhaps she felt differently. Maybe responsibility. That she helped him once and maybe she could still save him._

_She never got away. But I did. Outside of the wall that my father had erected around the two of us with abuse, I found a new world. And there I met Jess. That's all I have to say today. Maybe I'll talk more later. For now, it's time to move. Supplies aren't going to find themselves. _

_**December 26**__**th**__** (updated)**_

_I found a shovel discarded in somebody's backyard. It's a bit on the heavy side, and I swear I might throw off my own arm if I don't swing it carefully. But it's handier for taking out the runners than my tiny knife. If I walk slowly enough, hold my breath and don't make a noise, the infected fuckers won't even know what hit them when my shovel's blade takes their head off. _

_Made my way to the supermarket. Someone hit it before me, place had been cleared out long before I set foot in it today. Entire place was in disarray. Make my way around the place like a snail, taking out all the runners one by one. I nearly fucked up at the end, knocked over an empty water bottle. One of them came rushing at me and without thinking I fired at it with my gun. Bullet killed it instantly, but then I heard the shot echo. I heard more of those things come running. So I had to run._

_The last thing I remember running out of the store was noticing that not all of the dead in the store were runners. And not all of them had died via the hands of the infected. _

_I'm surprised I made it back here in one piece. I suppose that as long as I'm staying in town, this will be my base of operations. _

_**December 27**__**th**__**, 2013**_

_Went to town square today. The place was empty. Discounting all the bodies of course. Most of them hadn't reacted kindly to nature's course. Place smelt like shit. Some of them were wearing military uniforms – helmets and body armor. Seems like a last stand might've gone down here. Was tempted to take some of their gear for myself but thoughts of health hazards turned me away._

_World's ended – turned into a fucking zombie movie or some shit, human society is in shambles, and Mikey-old boy, you still care about your hygiene. _

_Unlike the last two days, I managed to find some useful things today. Batteries. Matches. Some packs of dried food. And some paper and pens for myself. But it's not much. Keep searching, I tell myself. I promise I'll keep this search up for another day or two. Then I'm heading back to the school. _

_There's something else._

_Dumped near a bench was a chocolate bar wrapper. The stains on the wrap were still fresh. And infected don't eat chocolate. Only one thing for sure_

_Either I've already gone nuts or I'm not alone. _

_**December 28**__**th**__**, 2013**_

_Alright, I can take solace in the fact that I am not actually nuts. As I stepped out of the motel room this morning, I saw a note pinned onto my door. _

"_Meet me at Prussian Lager – sunset 2day 2 trade stuff" scribbled hastily. Decided to take the risk of meeting whoever this mysterious survivor may be. If he is any good at surviving on his own in this infected death trap as I think he may be, he's sure to be loaded with good stuff that we back at the school could use. And maybe if I play my bargaining skills well enough – I might convince him to come with me. Then I remembered how well these bargaining skills have been used in the past, from mother to Jess, and a smile is wiped off my face._

_Good thing about his timeslot is that is gave me a good while to explore more of the town for stuff. Still no improved gains but at least I didn't set off any runners. _

_When the sun starts to set, I'll go to Prussian Lager. I remember it being a German pub not too far from town square. _

_**December 28**__**th**__**, 2013 (updated)**_

_The trip to Prussian Lager was surprisingly infected-free. There were some fresh dead bodies in the streets that I navigated over. All infected, with varying degrees of the fungus growing out of their bodies. Bullet holes. I presume that my mysterious host left them on his way to the pub. _

_My mysterious host turned out to be nothing like I expected. I had expected a roided-out dude, the sorta type the movies make you expect when you think of the guys that manage to survive on their own when all the shit is falling down around them. But he's nothing like that. He doesn't even look like he could swat a fly without pulling a muscle. Pimply face, glasses. Scrawny as a stick. Introduces himself as Danny. I didn't tell him my name but I told him that I was from a larger group that was nearby. Asked him if he wanted to join._

_He said he prefers being on his own (crazy – in a place like this, too) but he will give my thoughts some consideration. He says that Prussian Lager is just one of the many safehouses he has established around town as he shows me a map of the town with several locations marked with circles and Xs. Circles mean safehouses. Xs mean areas where the runners or spores are most concentrated. _

_Said I should probably catch a few winks, and that we will move out again in the morning. _

_Before I tune in, I will take the opportunity to write a little about myself once more since this is the first stable rest I've gotten since the last personal session. I met Jess in college. One thing led to another, and we started doing more than just dates. _

_I don't think it was until after mother's funeral and my impregnation of her that we got married – I don't remember anymore. She was a good girl. I think out of everyone I knew she was the one who understood me the most. Not entirely, but she was able emphasize a good chunk with my woes. But I never told her the full truth and she couldn't sympathize long enough to stay with me forever. _

_One day she told me she wanted to leave. It was April. I don't remember the year or day. Just the month. A half-finished bottle of the stuff was nearby on my desk, next to a pile of papers that I had barely filled out. This was the peak of our financial woes. I failed at many jobs at this point. Writer, teacher, business manager… so many things. _

_Why? _

_It's for our daughter's own good. _

_How? You think that having her parents split in two is going to do her good? I love her goddamn it… its just_

_Everything is taking its toll on you, Mike. Don't you remember the time you lashed out at her and left her lying on the floor?_

_What? I… I never hit her? The bottle suddenly seemed so welcoming as those words came out of my mouth. _

_I lied to the doctors. Said she slipped on a wet floor. I never told them it was actually your fist that give her the black eye. _

_I didn't hit her goddamn it. I don't remember ever doing it! You're lying to me, Jess! _

_That's because you are too fucking drunk! When you hit here you were drunk! And when I'm done talking to you, you'll probably get wasted to pretend this never happened! I love you, Mike, but you are falling to pieces right now and I don't know what else I can do before you do something worse to her or me! I want out. I'm sorry. _

_I tried to plead with her to stay with me, not to leave me alone. Maybe we could help each other through my crisis. But she would have none of it. It was for the best she thought. I was a wreck. I had already hurt them. And I knew at that moment I had failed at something else too._

_Danny caught me writing. Asked what it was. Told him it was none of his business. Kid got pissy, said he was just trying to see what was wrong since I looked troubled. I apologized, but it doesn't seem like he really accepted my words. I'll have to make it up to him somehow tomorrow. He seems like a genuinely cool kid. I like him. _

_**December _?, 2013**_

_A lot has happened in the time since the last entry. I better start at the beginning, to the crazy sob reading this journal (including myself… heh)_

_On the 29__th__, I woke up to the sound of eggs and bacon cooking. Yes, actual fucking eggs and bacon. It's amazing what you end up missing when the world's ended. Sure enough, Danny was whipping out a batch of the goods. _

_He told me to eat up. We had a long day of work ahead of us. _

_I gobbled down the breakfast faster than I ever had done for anything. I asked how he managed to get freaking bacon and eggs when there seemed to be no running electricity to power fridges in the town. Danny explained that most of the perishable goods he had already went kaput, but he was surviving on a cache of dried and preserved goods. Mentioned something about setting up a veggie garden once he had secured the part of town with the best soil. _

_I asked Danny what we were going to do today. He explained that it was time to clear the town of a few infected. I asked him what part. He replied the elementary school. There was a garden set up by some first-graders or something that could serve him later. We got to the elementary school with little ease. We traveled on bikes. He said that he has a car saved in one of his storehouses, but he doesn't use it much because of the noise it makes and most of the fuel being jacked up in the initial panic. Shit started to go down once we got to the school. _

_Is it just me, or are the runners getting smarter? I swear that some of them weren't just charging at us like the dumb brutes usually did. There were these ones with a whole bunch of fungus growing out of them. They actually seemed like they were toying with us. Taking alternate routes, trying to cut us off. If it weren't for Danny, I wouldn't be here writing this right now. We looked out for each other's asses, and we barely knew each other. In that moment, I thought all those stories about the selfishness of humanity when the panic hit could go suck it. _

_We actually secured the school. God fucking damn it, it was just the two of us against an entire bunch of the infected. And we fucking won. The school seemed good. Not many areas with spores. Danny had a gas mask on him. He saw I didn't – said that he would get to looking for a pair for me if I stuck around any longer. _

_**update – **__sorry for the pause there. A runner coming up on the road. Hoped on the pedal and swerved to avoid it then peddled like hell. Seems far enough now. I'll resume where I left off. _

_Afterwards, he pulled out his mark and made a couple of marks on the part where the school was. Then we biked to another safehouse, this one in an actual house in the suburb part of town. Danny told me that I did well today. He might consider giving me some supplies of his own to take back to my group. But he was still on the fence on whether he wanted to join us or not. I asked him why. Surely it must get lonely down here. He said that he was well-off. He was able to secure all his safehouses by himself and survive the initial panic. How well-off were we, if we were sending just one man down into a town with scant preparation? _

_Danny said that I could head down into the basement to see if there were any guns I would like to take with me._

_What sort of guns?_

_Automatics, semis, shotties, any sort of Rambo shit._

_Hell yes. I replied. _

_When I opened the basement door, I noticed how dark it was. I was about to ask him for a flashlight when I heard the footsteps coming up behind me. Before I could turn around, I heard something whishing through the air. I found out later that it was a baseball bat. But in that moment, I knew nothing except literal nothingness. A sea of black. All I knew was that I was still breathing and wasn't dead yet. _

_I don't know how I long I was out. When I woke up, he was shining a flashlight in my face. I had been gagged. I squirmed, tried to bag through my bindings. What the hell had happened? And fireworks were going off in my head… I had trouble focusing. All the altruism had gone out of his face like an extinguished candle. I wiggled my head around the room I was in, despite my bindings. _

_I wasn't alone. Not in physical presence at least. But whoever these people were, they all were long gone in that sense. _

"_I suppose that you're rather pissed at me." Danny was speaking as he looked over a knife. "That's why I put the gag on you before you woke up. After all these folks, verbal abuse just doesn't do anything for me no more. I can listen to it for hours with only a morbid curiosity to feed. But you people can never think of anything new to say. But hey… maybe you do. After all, I don't know you like I knew these others fellows I strung up." So he removed my gag._

"_What the hell, you crazy son of a bitch? I thought we were in this together!" I tried to spit at him, but he decked me before I could do it. Goddamn, that skinny bastard hit harder than you think he could have._

"_So far, nothing new. We were never in this together. You just fell for the act. It was all contrived really."_

"_What the fuck? Is this what you do for kicks? Get the trust of people and then kill 'em later? You're just a fucking kid. And every ounce of your fiber is perfectly fine with what the hell you're doing here?"_

"_No. Not for kicks. It's for my survival. Me above all else. Not a muscle in my body opposing their continued lease on life. Let me tell you something about me, Mike. You know, you probably could tell already, but before all this shit went down – I was a loser. That dork who spent all his free-time wasting it away on the internet while he jacked off to the vixens in his comic books and video games."_

"_What the hell do fucking comics and video games have to do with anything?"_

"_I was on the bottom of the food chain. No one noticed me. I never felt so surrounded yet so alone in those days. And for the lack of a better word, I was a coward. But you know, back in September, when that world ended… invisibility and cowardice is what helped me survive. No one thought to take me out. And I never got it into my head to be a hero. But I saw everything that everyone else did in order to survive. And I realized something, you know what it is?"_

"_That you're a fucking maniac, huh?"_

_He hit me again. I could taste blood in my mouth. But my teeth were still firm at least. "No. I'm not a fucking maniac, psycho, sociopath, or any other words you can toss at me. You see, I realized why in spite of our fascination with them in pop-culture, there are no real-life superheroes. Because the idea of a being that'll put their own interests below the greater good is jack-diddly-squat nowhere to be found in a real human's soul if we even got any to begin with. We naturally are selfish self-centered fuckers. Sure, we can pretend we're good folks. But once you take away all the distractions and conveniences we take for granted… what do you have left to find? The whole world is just a fucking contrived place. I didn't even need to kill all of my old group by myself… they did themselves in. I realized something… this was a world where I could finally rise to the top. Play King as you can see here. And I realize that I really fucking enjoy it. I'm not letting anyone take that from me. Don't bother with the psycho routine, as I've said. Who's to say you wouldn't be doing the same if you were in my position? This is just who we are at the core. Rotten. But at least I'm being honest and embracing it. Go ahead, tell me how long you think your group at the high school will last the longer this goes on and it becomes more apparent with each passing day that no one is coming to save you."_

"_So you're just going to shoot me now?"_

"_Shoot you? Oh no. You see, I could see it in your eyes at the school when we were clearing it. Admiration. Trust. So much more. I think it's gonna be more satisfying to chase you down like a dog. Do it dirty. Personal. Make you beg. I took the liberty of taking away all of the deadly shit you were carrying on you. But still, I've played this game before and I know how it goes."_

"_God, you must be a buzzkill when it comes to hide and seek."_

"_Well, well, how did you know what game we were playing? As I was saying… you still hope. And it does give me a personal tingly to crush it. You know, Mikey, I'm going to enjoy reading through your diary when you're dead. Wonder what's in it that you'd never want anyone else to see. Jack-off tally count, perhaps? Or maybe every sex fantasy you've ever had about your kids." _

"_You son of a bitch." He's wrong though. I've never had a single urge to touch my daughter like those sickos they show on the news. He's also wrong about taking away all of my deadly shit. I could still feel the knife I had in my boot. _

"_Ah, I've hit the right nerve, haven't I? Go on, get angry. It won't make a difference." He smiled. "Let's play, then, shall we? Don't feel so bad, though… you're far from the first… and you definitely won't be the last of those poor fuckers who wander into this town to play with me."_

_He released me. Instantly, I keeled over as if suffering from the mother of all stomach aches, used it as cover to get the pocketknife from my boot. "Aw, you weak little bitch." He laughed. "I'll make it quick then. You aren't gonna be any fun at all." And just as Danny came close to hitting me, I lunged upward and tore a seam through his stomach to the neck. He went down without a scream. Silent. I think he was just losing too much blood at that point, but maybe… just maybe he didn't care. I kept stabbing him until I was sure he was dead._

_Christ I killed that killed. But Jesus, like what the fuck. The kid was fucking C.R.A.Z.Y. _

_Then I realized as I stood over his expanding pool of blood. I looked down at all the punctures in his body. The pierced eyeballs and mutilated remains of his lower jaw. Bits of brain leaking out with a gas-like hiss noise. _

_Psycho or not, he was the first human… non-infected that I ever killed. The experience is nothing like the movies. No casual stroll away. Not even the blood and wounds look anything like Hollywood has ever put on the silver screen. I vomited all over his corpse as I thought about this. I grabbed the flashlight he was holding. Staggered away, still in shock. But before I could make it to the steps of the basement, I noticed a newspaper on a bench nearby as well as a poster of the infected in various stages. Apparently some of the runners we fought at the school were actually stalkers. _

_**US Military Recalls Search Effort **_

_My next thought went exactly as follows: Oh shit. We just went from 99% doomed to 100% doomed. _

_**update 2 – **__Finally made it back to the school. I'm pooped. I hit all of Danny's safehouses. I probably looked ridiculous when I was doing it. A near middle-aged man fleeing for his life on a bike from a mob of infected. I can barely move with this bag full of all the heavy stuff on me. The others don't say a word to me, not even those who I can consider pseudo-buddies. They don't comment on the stuff I suddenly found. The bicycle, the new guns ,etc. They're too focused on getting the supplies to somewhere secure in our little safehouse. _

_I kept the newspaper with me. Do I have the heart to tell them? Will it be the right thing to break whatever hope still exists among them? _

_Then I thought of something else. How long will it last? They know that I was gone longer than expected. But they say nothing. But I can feel something brewing in the air… as CCR once sung… I see the bad moon arising. _

_I heaved myself to an empty classroom where a bare mattress lay. And here I am, slumped here. Just writing. Safe at last. What does that word even mean anymore?_

_As usual, in case I don't get the chance to do it, in person... good-night to you, Jess and Katie. Both of you.  
><em>

_If they're even still alive. I better stop writing right here. Unless I start crying myself to sleep through the night, and I really don't want to have to explain myself to anyone who hears me tomorrow morning.  
><em>


	13. No Way Back

By Kaiser Caesar

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><p>My life is a twenty-year nightmare that I still haven't woken from. Sucks, doesn't it? It's been so long since the good 'ol days, and yet I can remember them so clearly. Remember shit like Twitter? Remember shit pop music on the radio and Hollywood on the big screen? Peel back the hardened layers far back enough, and everyone who was alive to witness that era of "There's no Team in I" will. All the narcissism, greediness, the attention whoring, a slice of the way things used to be preserved perfectly in what the old world left behind like a mosquito in amber sap. How little we had to worry about, and how ludicrous the things we worried about were.<p>

And I can't help but feel like crying whenever I think about who I used to be. Part of that crowd… the rising stars that could only go higher while climbing to the top of the world on the bones of everyone else. The celebrities. Our every breath and step immortalized by the tabloid press. Personal body guards, private jets that could take us anywhere we wanted to go. The only worries we ever had were fat and being caught in the act of a DUI. We were on the top of the world. The spoiled shits who cynics always brought up when wondering why cops and others who actually helped the community were paid less but no one but them gave a rat's about it. We were immortal, we would be forever young, and no one could stop us. A life we jubilantly rode at maximum overdrive, until everything went too fast even for us the last months of 2013. When everything came crashing down.

The new world quickly rewrote the rulebook. I suppose that other than the politicians, no group of people were hit harder than us. In the course of one night, we were thrust into a world that no longer needed us. No more VIP treatment. Suddenly all the money and fame we had no longer meant jack. All our private planes and limos confiscated by the government for their fuel, our houses on Sunset Boulevard ransacked, and the spotlights taken off of us at last. It no longer mattered who got who pregnant or who got caught doing Mexican Mud in the bathroom of this week's hottest nightclub. It no longer mattered whose voice sounded good in autotune, who wrote what, or who won the award for Best Picture. All that mattered was who could hold a gun or hoard enough to survive. All the songs, the books, and the scripts simply up and went to hell.

And that was when the world was still in shock after the first day. When it became clear that there was no miracle cure, that things would never be the way they were ever again, and that even the government that was supposed to be protecting us were leaving us behind… As the infection evolved and the lights in our collective hearts extinguished… that's when true hell broke out, taking all of us with it.

You know what's ironic? I had made my living starring in mainly action movies. You know the sort, one-liner quipping badasses who dressed up in colorful spandex or sleek tuxedos. And as each check from my latest box-office smashing hit poured into my mailbox, I got into the illusion. Thought that I was the badass who would always be fucking prepared for whatever came his way. But when the shit finally happened, that's nothing close to what really happened. When my co-star was having her neck torn out by the cameraman, when my limousine was rammed off by the road, and when all of LA county around me was in flames I learned an unfortunate truth. That I was no badass. That I was an A-list level coward and that was the only thing that kept me alive.

My parents were both actors. I spent a good chunk of my childhood alternating between the states and the UK. I suppose that I had a choice when it came to my adult profession, but it never felt like I did. I always supposed back then before Day One that I had been born into this life, that the silver screen was my destiny. I knew all the big names, and I had them on speed-dial. I was even engaged to one of them, and our period of engagement was one of the major headliners before the Pandemic cut it short.

I never found out what happened to any of them. My parents were both in London at the time of the outbreak, and there was only the sound of a dead line every time I tried to call before I finally gave up and accepted that I would never see them again. I never tried to find her either. I was too scared to make the search, and I accepted the fate of our love as the military quarantined LA. What hurts most nowadays, even with how desensitized we've all become, is remembering that once upon a time in a land far far away I had this life. But I can't even remember their faces or what their voices sounded like anymore.

* * *

><p>I started this new life out on the West Coast, but eventually I drifted east with each year as society continued to decay. I was betrayed, I betrayed, I did whatever it took to survive. But I mostly ran. Like I said, I came to grips quickly that I wasn't a badass and that anyone who tried to be a badass like the ones they played onscreen were only going to get a nasty one-time taste of reality. When our own fellow survivors started turning on each other in addition to the walking horror that already menaced our lives, this only reinforced my cowardice. It wasn't easy to survive. The shame follows me wherever I drift next, and I don't even know what I'm surviving for now anymore. I'm never going to see my fiancée or anyone that I genuinely cared about in my vapid old world again. I'm never going to act in this lifetime again. And yet I keep going. I don't know why.<p>

Currently, in the year Two Thousand Whatever since time stopped mattering long long ago, I find myself with a small circle of drifters like myself. They plan on drifting to the East Coast for whatever fucking reason. It's mostly out of circumstance for all of us. It's an odd sort of paradox. The world decreed long ago that it was every fucker for themselves, but you have better luck betting on your chances of seeing tomorrow by sticking around in a group. I don't think it will last. Twenty years of running have taught me that. Soon it'll either be me that deserts them or them that desert me, depending on how soon they find out how fucking useless I really am. I'm not sure I even know what their names are. I mean, why even bother getting attached to someone you know will probably die?

We're gathered around a campfire. By some lucky chance one of us managed to find a box of matches that were still good in the remains of a convenience store that hadn't been fully looted. It's the weakest fire I've ever seen, and I suppose that it's bound to flicker out by itself any moment now. In the early days, there'd be singing around campfires like this. But as the years went by and it became clear there was no rescue coming, the singing ceased. We just sit and stare, sometimes talking.

When we do talk, it's a varied nest of bees we kick. In the early days it was about why. Try to piece together why a strain of fungi was suddenly able to infect humans and turn them into monsters. Try to find an excuse for why none of us but the smartest of asses weren't able to see it coming until it was too late and the horrors were right on our front lawn. But I've noticed that as the years have gone by, after it became apparent that there was no rescue coming, we talk about why the Infected came about less. Perhaps we've just come to accept that our lives are now in a world of shit, and that the only turning back is a bullet to the head.

Today starts with how grim our situation is.

"So what's for dinner?"

"Found these two rabbits lyin' by the sides of the road."

"Christ… you expecting us to eat that? Look at that shit oozing out of their wounds."

"Well, we ain't exactly in a position to choose now, are we?"

"Well, we also ain't in a position where we can afford to get sick."

"We have a fire, damnit. Cook it well, and I'm sure the worst of the bacteria gone die in the fire."

"We gonna have to find some clean food and supplies fast, otherwise we aren't all gonna make it to Boston in one piece.

"For fuck's sake, what makes you so certain any of us are gonna make it to Boston? We haven't even crossed the border into Illinois yet. I lost half my fucking old group crossing Nebraska to crazies, disease, starvation, and infected. Who fucking knows how long it's gone take us to get to Boston from there? Especially with the fucking kids weighing us down? They're the ones that are gonna get sick and tired the first. They're the ones that ain't gonna last long."

"Maybe… if that ha" The busty blonde slaps the guy who brings that up.

"Fuck that thought. We ain't degrading ourselves to that level, y'hear?" I wonder how long any of us can uphold that. In these twenty years, I've seen myself and others degrade ourselves to levels we thought we'd never go to in our old lives.

"Any word from our pair of enterprising scouts?"

"I see only one of 'ems come back so far. So, what did you find?" He asks the scout, small and brown.

"We aren't the only survivors in this neck of the woods. There's a settlement around here… but…"

"But what?"

"They don't look like they're the friendly types. More like the hunting types. There's traps all around their main camp."

"But if they've established a permanent residence in this area… they might be able to have some things we can use."

"I doubt that they'll just be willin' to hand that over to us."

"We need to work out a plan. So, where do you suppose our other scout has gone?" At that moment, we heard screaming and the sound of desperate running feet. Then came the moans, clicks, and other nightmarish sounds that we had grown familiar to in this dark new world, and still feared just as dearly as the second we first heard them.

"Aw, fuck! Infected inbound!" One of the first rules you learn is to always keep a weapon at hand, no matter what your thoughts on gun control may have been in the old days.

I don't even know why I even keep this gun on me. I'm too much of a shaky aimer to hit anything that isn't flat out humping me, and by the time I let one of those things that close it'll be too late. I'm just wasting ammo, to put things short. The scout being chased is too slow. A clicker pounces on him and that's the end of things as it bites into his throat before being sheared away in a hail of bullets. I'm lucky that everyone else here can shoot. I guess that's what a difference between a pampered life and a normal life will do. When some things go missing, maybe some are better suited to cope.

I'm surprised that I last the duration of the rest of the attack without pissing or crapping myself.

* * *

><p>Almost like nothing happened, we immediately set back to what we were doing before the infected showed up. We don't even bother burying our dead scout, whatever the fuck his name was. I have to wonder just how fucking desensitized we must have become since the end of the good old life.<p>

Now we talk about what's happened out there. We know the story of what happened to the former US of A. Now it's time to theorize what happened to the rest of the world.

The blonde brings up the topic of Russia. The guy who suggested cannibalism earlier thinks that they were probably prepared for it. Probably back to a standard of Soviet living conditions. Leads us to the neighboring Asian commies. China and North Korea. But does it really matter? They're over there, if there's still anyone in those places alive. We're over here. Why bother fantasizing about what's happened to somebody else when it's yourself you have to worry about? But I don't bring this up. merely listen to them go back and forth.

Somehow what happened to the world leads to what happened to the big names.

The President. "Dead."

Some Supreme Court Justice. "The way he lived. Went out screwing."

That horror author. "Probably High Chancellor of the Dominion of Maine by now. Either that, or he tried to head to Border after a bad dream and died along the way."

The musician. "Probably tried to show the infected all you needed was love and got ripped to shreds in exchange."

So on. Eventually somebody brings up my own name, and this is where I finally pipe up. "Fuck him. He's probably dead and that's for the best."

* * *

><p>It's decided tomorrow by Leader Guy that we're going to send a sortie to the survivor's camp. If we can't negotiate a deal with them, we steal what we can. It's a fucking suicide job. Everybody knows that. But everybody is more desperate than logical at this moment.<p>

There will be a team of three. Living Scout is the first one we choose. We'd have picked the other scout, but he is kind of dead right now. Leader Guy says to be fair we're going to pick straws to determine the rest. Everybody but him will be entered. Yeah, that's really fucking fair.

The first stick that comes up goes to Cannibalism Guy. Then the second stick is pulled and it turns out that it's me – the fucking cowardly lion and the guy who can't shoot straight to save his life. If this turns out to be a ploy to cut off all the dead weights by Leader Guy, I am going to be really fucking pissed. Actually, scratch that. I'll probably be dead.

But really, I can't protest.

* * *

><p>We're walking along a stretch of abandoned highway, surrounded by flat green countryside. Nothing but grass and other manner of overgrown fauna as far as anyone can see. Hardly any abandoned cars in this road. What cars we do find have long been gutted and left to rot. Occasionally there will be a collapsing farmhouse we can see way off the road and a stretch of broken windmills.<p>

"How much further?"

"Not very long." Scout assures me. We reach a dust trail that veers off the main road. "This should be it... watch your step."

We hear gunshots and instinctively we jump off the main road, into the grass, which doesn't make much difference because this grass is hardly tall enough to hide our bodies. We crawl towards their farmhouse, and we can hear shouting as we see them scurrying about.

"Fucking psycho tourist cunts!" One of them is screaming. To my shock, he is being ridden on by some tiny reddish brownish whatever haired girl, who is stabbing him to death. Next to him, some mangy woman is getting her head smashed in by some bearded fuck's 2x4.

"What the hell are we going to do?" I ask the Scout. Try not to piss yourself, try not to piss yourself cause you might die…

"I have an idea." says Cannibalism Guy. "I say that we wait for whoever's fightin' who to thin each other out. Then we rush in, finish the survivors, and take home the goods."

"Well, that sounds like a plan." But we can't stick to that plan for long because in the upper floor window, I see a flash of light pointing at us. Almost instantly, a bullet is fired and it goes through the eyeball of the Scout, killing him straightaway.

Cannibal Guy loses it. He runs off. Right into a tripwire. I don't even have time to register the Scout's death before my eardrums are rocked by the sound of the explosion. Before I see the flying parts of Cannibal Guy land, I'm already up and running. Somehow I'm lucky enough. The rifle guy's bullets miss me each of them. But before I can make it back to the road, I hear the roaring of an engine and the rolling of wheels. Holy shit, they have a truck! A fucking smoke-spewing truck of death that's coming right towards me! Screaming, but not losing it, I roll off to the side.

Then I think, what the hell will the group do to me if I return with everybody else dead but no supplies to account for our ordeal? Shit, what they might do to me, the desperate starving fuckers, might be nothing compared to what these psychos will do.

So, before I can even think about what the hell I'm doing, I'm running towards hell. I see the bearded fuck aim a revolver and fire at the truck. I hear a tire pop and the truck spins off towards a fiery overturned fate. Holy hell! This guy is good, and his girl too! You know, maybe I should actually join up with them after all this is done! Surely they're good enough to cover my ass.

You know, I can't properly describe what I felt like in the next couple of minutes. It was pure euphoria. Everything bad that had been building up in the last two decades suddenly washed away in one moment of pure ecstasy. What was it? I can't really say for sure. I think that there's an instinct in us all. An instinct just to survive. And when we're pushed to our absolute limits, that instinct takes hold. And we either survive or fall. And I suppose even a coward such as me has a drive to survive. I couldn't believe it. It might've been actually true. That after all these years of running away, which followed the years of pretending, I may have actually been a badass.

Crap, I was killing the hostiles who got in my way like somebody out of a shooter flick. Of course, not as cleanly, and I wasn't sprouting off one-liners. But then I hear something splat at my legs. Fragments of brick. I see the little girl holding a pistol at me. I don't know what I'm thinking, but I run towards her, knocking her to the ground. I have to get her out of here and to safety, like how the hero always saves the girl, show her that I'm on her side.

"Let go of me, you fucker!" She screams as I try to wrest her under my control. Christ, she's a bit crazy!

"Shut up! I'm doing this for you!" I tell her. Alright, not exactly the best choice of one-liner. Who the fuck says that to someone they don't even k- she sinks her teeth into my hand and I scream like a bitch, releasing her.

So much for the badass. My high dies and suddenly I am thrust back into reality. The harsh reality that I live in where there are no heroes and nobody escapes unharmed. I don't even hear her rip out her pocketknife or feel her jump onto me. I feel desperate, lonely, and tired. I just wanna go back to my good old life. Before the first of us were infected, before the last of us lost sight of who we once were and accepted the darker half. The old life where there was no responsibility. Just an upward climb of fame and fortune of the fortunate while the forgotten rest linger and rust away.

But there's no way back, I know this as she plunges her knife into me over and over, for the rest of time. I slump to the ground, last breaths leaving me. Christ, was it really that long ago? That life… so familiar yet so foreign.

I feel like crying, but I've got no strength to do that anymore. Shit… I couldn't even overpower a girl half my size.

She and the bearded man are looking over me.

"You ok, Ellie?"

"Yeah. This fucker tried to grab me."

"Hmph. Who knows what sick things he was planning to do to you." The bearded guy shakes his head. I open my mouth, try to tell them that I didn't mean anything bad. That I was just trying to help. But all that come out of my mouth are unintelligible babble.

"You know, Joel, I've been wondering. How come almost all the people we run into these days just wanna kill us? Can't we just for once run into some guys who just want to hand us free puppies?"

"I don't know. That's just the way things are these days. People just got used to the notion of killing other people for their stuff. Not even kids like you are safe anymore. Y'know, this guy seems sorta familiar…"

"Really?"

"Nah, doesn't matter. That guy was a cowardly fucker. I doubt he'd last as long as this guy has. Or had." The last thing I see before the world goes dark is the bearded man lifting his boot hell and bringing it down.

* * *

><p>"Jesus, Joel! He was already gonna bleed out." Ellie said, looking at the asshole's crushed head. "No need... for... that."<p>

"Hey, I needed to be sure he wasn't gonna get back up. Now get a move on and let's search this place."

"Sure thing, Joel."


	14. Untitled

**Meaningless Meandering by the Trio**

* * *

><p>September 26th, 2013. On that day, the world as they knew it ended. But as one candle flickered out, another was lit. But the brave new world is no welcoming place. There is a story that has been told many times in the twenty years since that fateful day, across the world. Different places, different people, but always the same at its core. The location doesn't matter, nor do the tattered remnants of the flags still hanging. A city that was once a bustling metropolis, now a deserted corpse crumbling with each passing year as nature reclaims inch by inch. Most have departed to find hope in a world where hope slowly withdraws each second. To the place where they can escape from the nightmare. A castle in the sky. Escape from the monsters and the monster men. Those who remain are dead, or shall be one day like the rest.<p>

Two such men linger on in these ruins, knowing full well that they only delay their destiny, but they continue to drift about. Neither of them knows what they are surviving for, or why they have joined together. But regardless of what it might have been, they stick together like puzzle pieces. They pick through every corner and doorway they come across, looking for the necessities. They hide from the nightmares that lurk in every shadow, the fearsome clicks resonating in their sleepless nights when the sun sets. And it's not just the infected that were once human like them that the two men worry about. It's the other humans that frighten them the most, so badly that they've begun shooting at others upon sight. Morality be damned, better them than I.

Life in these times is hard, and it only gets harder. A downward spiral, the ship of rescue having sunk before it even arrived.

* * *

><p>When they aren't fighting for their survival, the two men meander about. After twenty years drifting about in this manner, even the crucial act of finding something to eat can become somewhat of a predictable chore. The two are half-heartedly cleaning out a row of office cubicles filled mostly with dust and rotted paper when one man bends over suddenly.<p>

A-ha! He cries out in excitement. Look what I found. He says to the second man.

You know that shit isn't worth anything now.

Yes… nobody in particular wants money anymore, but I couldn't help but think.

Think about what?

About our lives.

A 2011 Gettysburg quarter makes you think about our lives?

Well, you see, each coin has two sides to it. Back in our day, when we sometimes had trouble decided between two different things, we'd flip a coin to decide based on what side it landed on.

As he said this the first man flipped the coin in his hands and the second man asked him a question. So what does the quarter mean in our case?

Think of the coin as our destiny. Time is the person unseen that flips it… The first man flipped the coin but as he did this he stumbled and flying the coin went. Through a broken window. They heard the coin land on the pavement below and following it, the sounds of a clicking beast as it screeched and thrashed about, confused by the noise the quarter had made.

Can you see what side it landed on?

No. But we were fucked regardless of what side it landed on. Only difference is when.

So what's for lunch?

I caught a rat earlier. If we eat around the green parts I think we should be fine…

* * *

><p>Another day, they hid themselves in a building that stood across from the hospital. They spied on the yellow-jacked men and women that went in and out, or wandered about. These people were the only folks left in the city who seemed to be coming to the place, in sporadic intervals of time, instead of passing through or getting out other than the two. Who exactly were they? The first man brought this question up.<p>

What do you suppose they're doing in there?

Nothing.

That's it, nothing?

What do you suppose anyone has to do these days besides eat, sleep, shit, and occasionally fuck a bit?

Well, more of them wouldn't be arriving if that was all they were doing. Sometimes they bring in supplies and medical equipment, plus a bunch of science looking stuff.

How would I know? Why should we even care? I wouldn't even know how to work any medical or science looking things if I saw one.

What do you suppose they are?

Soldiers, maybe.

I don't think soldiers dress in eye-sore colors like yellow. I think they'd be wearing something a bit more badass like black.

Black, badass? What the hell are you, a twelve-year old who just discovered how to masturbate? Maybe they're just soldiers with a death-wish.

You think they're the Fireflies that used to be on all the radio broadcasts? Sometimes I wished our radio still worked, but not that much. It was just mostly static from what I can remember.

Maybe. You know what I think they're doing in there?

What?

Just waiting for everybody to come. And when they do that, it's going to be like one of those ritual suicides in cults you sometimes saw on the news. Before it became too commonplace and the news and the people who watched the news just stopped caring.

So they're just there waiting for the right time to commit suicide? Seems sorta bleak if you ask me… but that makes me think about something. Why haven't we killed ourselves yet?

I don't know. Maybe it's just cause we're too scared to face the certainty of death or because we don't know what's for certain after. I used to believe in something, but after seeing everything's that's come and gone these past twenty years, I can't really believe those words anymore. But if they did turn out to be true, well, I'd be fucked. We're all fucked. There's none of us that will go anywhere but downwards.

You know… they probably have a holy grail of shit in there. We could live like kings if we managed to take them out.

Yeah, good luck with that. They have assault rifles and God knows what else. All we have is a rusting rifle, a 9mm with one round in it, and a big stick. One of them alone could turn us into assburgers. They probably have an entire army down there.

Hey, it's a really big stick.

* * *

><p>Another day they came across a family of tourists going through a section of the city that was far off from the patrols of the yellowjackets that had taken up housing in the hospital. Without a moment's hesitation, the two men murdered the family and took to looting their corpses and car for supplies. As they stripped the father of his clothes and tossed the bodies away, they talked to pass the hours while they did their ransacking.<p>

The first man commented. Well, that was easy. Say. Remember when people were actually trying to help each other instead… of you know, doing what we're doing here?

Yeah, I remember those days well. Hell, I even remember feeling hope that the Pandemic would only be temporary and soon enough the Cavalry would come charging down the hill with the cure and all that shit. That tomorrow we could still wake up to the smell of bacon and eggs frying, go catch a flick in the cinema, and check on e-mail on the computer. I guess that once we came to realize that no one was coming to save us especially not the FEDRA pigs and their QZs and that it would simply be easier to play last man standing, things fell apart.

Do you ever miss those sorts of things?

I don't think about the past a lot. I just think about now and the future. Might as well be depressed by what could happen instead of depressed because of what you knew once happened and know will never happen again. It's hell when I do. Not just memories. Sometimes my stomach grumbles when we

Man, look at all this stuff they were carrying on them. This will last us for months. The first man bent down and knocked on the gas tank's lid, pressing his ear against it. Too bad there isn't a lot of gas in this thing left. Otherwise maybe we could find some old rock and roll cds and ride this thing out of town like a bunch of badasses. And all we had to do to get it was kill these kids and their parents. Huh. I wonder why they bothered stopping in a place like this. Not like they were going to easily find more gas for this thing or whatever they were looking for.

Who the hell cares? Why bother thinking about it? We have problems of our own to focus on.

* * *

><p>A few months later, when the season was spring, they were low on supplies once again. They left their safehouse to comb the city, ignoring the growling in their stomachs, the empty feeling that they had grown so accustomed to over the years. They crept through a district littered with decayed cars and fallen buildings when suddenly they saw the animals. The first man's jaw dropped as he saw the herd come into view, eating from the trees that had overgrown in the area. He hadn't seen anything like this in decades. Their necks were just as long as he remembered, the spotting just as peculiar as he remembered from his childhood animal books. As the first man stood admiring the giraffes, liberated from the shackles of his life for just a few moments in euphoric ecstasy, he heard the second man cock his rifle.<p>

Wait… what the hell are you doing?

Bagging us some African style steaks for tonight.

Jesus Christ, man, you can't shoot a giraffe!

Why the hell not? We need food, otherwise we are going to die! Do you think that we could subsist entirely on leaves like these long-necked fuckers?

Well, we could try.

Aw, fuck you.

Come on. Just how many of these giraffes do you think are left in this world? Do you know the ramifications of what you will do if you pull that trigger?

I never see you getting all teary-eyed whenever we fuck up a cat or bunny or rat we come across.

Well, cats are everywhere. So are bunnies and rats in this piss-water city. They breed like there's no fucking tomorrow, so there's always going to be another cat or bunny or rat no matter how many of them we hunt down for food. But giraffes… we don't see much of them anymore. And it would be a mighty shame to know that we could never see them again.

Fuck off, you sentimentalist cunt. We're still eating African burgers tonight. The second man pulled on the trigger. The first man looked away, but there was no death cry. The shot had missed. The herd of giraffes stampeded away. They could hear the shot reverberating in echoes, ricochets. Then the sound of something breaking, the sound of something heavy dropping down. Then they heard the moans, the crazed laughing, and the clicks of all that was inhuman. In front of them, pouring from out of the darkness like ants from an anthole, came the infected. Worse than nightmares. Bodies that once were human, mangled beyond sanity's comprehension by the force of the fungus. With only one purpose left.

They both knew that they didn't have enough ammunition or a good enough position to fight off the entire horde. So the two men turned and ran.

See, asshole? This is why you don't fucking shoot at the giraffes!

Somehow they managed to elude the horde. But there was hardly a chance to catch their breaths. They heard footsteps coming. They dove behind through the broken window of an adjacent deli to hide. Peeking a sliver out, they caught a glimpse of two yellow-jackets dragging away two bodies. One a small red-headed girl, the other an older man.

What was that all about? The second man asked.

I don't know. The yellowjackets are dragging away a couple of tourists.

For what?

Maybe they're planning on eating them. Or having the greatest post-pandemic orgy the former US of A has ever seen. The old faggot I can understand them wanting to fuck. But that girl hardly looked like she was beyond thirteen. Do you think that the yellowjackets could be that depraved?

Who cares? We've all done things we thought we never would have since Pandemic Day. It not like thirteen makes a difference from twenty-five or sixty-four anymore.

I was just thinking. We've been spying on these yellowjackets for months, maybe years cause I can't remember time now, and we haven't got a single idea just what the hell they're doing in that hospital. Sometimes I wish we knew what was going on.

I don't. It's not our problem. Just like how New York City was flooded because no one could man the sewers and pumps anymore. Just like how Israel and the rest of the Middle East reduced each other to big smoking craters with their nukes is not our problem. The more we concern ourselves with the needs of others is the more we risk ourselves getting killed.

* * *

><p>Sometime later.<p>

They were about to cross the road when from out of nowhere a car sped past them, splashing them with filthy water. Neither of them saw who the driver was. They talked as they walked, going far from where they had been splashed when their conversation ended.

What the hell was that about?

I don't know. But that fucker ruined my clothes. Christ, it's going to take forever to get rid of the smell.

Who care? We can always kill another family passing through for more clothes.

Yeah, but then there's the matter of bullet holes and blood.

Goddamn it, don't you be bringing that u- um, who the hell are you assholes? The two men found themselves surrounded by flashlight beams. Weapons pointed at them, held in the hands of yellowjackets. One of the yellowjackets, flat-chested cunt wearing a beret, reached for a radio and spoke into it.

"I found two stragglers not too far from where Joel was last spotted."

Who the hell is Jo- The first man was smacked in his face by another yellowjacket's rifle-butt. Jesus Christ, you fucker! The first man screamed as he bent over, blood dribbing from his smashed nose, teeth falling from his mouth. You could've broke my jaw with that!

"And it's not the only thing we'll break if you assholes don't shut up until we tell you to speak."

"Yes, I know. Alright, line them up." The head cunt decreed.

Wait… what the hell are they doing? The first man asked as the two men were stripped off their supplies and weapons, forced against the wall.

What do you think?

This isn't very fair. We don't even know these people, we don't even know who they're hunting after, we don't even know what their whole problem is, and yet they're just going to line us up and shoot us like we're nothing.

I know. But I guess we reap what we sow.

Guns fired. Two bodies dropped. The Firefly spoke back into her radio. "Alright, it's done. The stragglers are dead." She turned it off and spoke to the rest. "Let's get back to what we were supposed to be doing."

They left the bodies behind.


	15. Goodbye Blue Sky: Middle of the Road

_**whatever day, 201(3?)**_

_I've just woken up a bit early. I don't know how early it is. I'm still feeling a bit hazy from what happened back in town. No sign of sunrise on the horizon. Everyone else is still asleep. I can't believe it. They actually forgot to assign someone on night duty tonight. I suppose RP will chew them out after dawn in spite of all this. I wonder how much longer he's going to last, in this Sheriff role that he's placed himself in. _

_I feel a bit troubled, reluctant to try to return to the realm of the sleeping. Weird thing about my dream tonight is that I can hardly remember what it was, but I feel disturbed by it nonetheless. I suppose that I should waste the time away once more by scribbling down my stream of consciousness, but I can't find what the right words to scribble are. _

_I'm just troubled. By everything. I always was troubled since Day One of the Pandemic but after what happened to me in town, things just seemed to jump up tenfold. It all ties back to one question. Why is this happening? Perhaps there's still hope that maybe this is all just some sick, prolonged nightmare… but it doesn't seem that I'll ever wake up from it. _

_Why am I still alive? If this was a movie, I'd have been just an extra, offed in the background to up the body count. I had no special skills. I was a failure – struggling to find a steady job after every failed enterprise, no family, just nothing. I remember feeling the aimlessness and grounded feeling of my teenage years, my hope that one day I would escape the hell that the world and I built for myself and figure out everything. Maybe for a while, after Katie was born, it seemed like that, but nothing's certain anymore. I'm no longer eighteen, but I still don't know what to do with my life other than survive to see the next sunrise. _

_That's all I really can do now. Thrust into a world where people inhale spores and turn into monsters, thrust into a world where either everyone you cared about is dead or missing, thrust into a world where you aren't even sure if you can trust anyone anymore. Survive. But what is worth surviving for? It's starting to look less likely that the cavalry is going to charge out of the horizon with their miracle cure and repair everything. I was once dreamed of being the next King but there's no one to publish books anymore. My family was once the beacon of hope but I don't even know if they're still alive. _

_All I can do is survive to survive. It's either that or a barrel in the mouth. But if there's anything that scares me more than the harshness of the new world order, it's the uncertainty of the alternative. And just briefly, I remember the day my father's rages stopped for good. A day I tried so hard to forget. _

_**January 4**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_Today I got from Dole that it was actually 2014 instead of 2013. I also learned that Craig died while I was gone. Didn't find out what they did with the body. Didn't bother asking. He wasn't that important to me._

_Other than that, it was a pretty mundane day. Spent the whole day sitting at the watch-post, looking for any sign of trouble. Infected or human. But none came, just giving me more time to ponder. Thinking about the things I'll never have again. Such as pizza – sustenance of Gods - and those old Oreo milkshakes that Mother used to make for me on my birthday when she had enough money to buy the stuff. I tried, and I even got Jess to try, to recreate them but they never tasted as great as I remembered. _

_You know, I actually think that's worse. Thinking about what's never going to happen again. So I did my best to accept that things have moved on (I'll probably be back at it, lamenting the loss of the drive-thru tomorrow) and think about what I'll probably be having in the future. Fried rat, roasted rat, boiled rat, yum-yums. _

_You know, that was hardly any better._

_**January 5**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_Today I tried to talk to RP about the newspaper I found. He told me to fuck off. He was too busy to deal with my bullshit today. I tried to tell him that it was gravely important but he retained his fuck off attitude. I got tempted to just leap up and wring his neck, but then I remembered Danny, felt like vomiting and let the bastard walk away to do his own business. _

_Tried to play a game of blackjack with the female Smith but the deck was incomplete. Neither of us had anything to bet. And I got weirded out by her stare, so I abruptly cut things short there. _

_On my way to bed tonight, I heard Stevie sobbing. Found her rocking and curled up in one of our supply shacks. I didn't speak to her. I decided it was best for me not to get involved in her nightmares when I was already preoccupied with living out my own._

_**January 7**__**h**__**, 2014**_

_Didn't have a time to update this yesterday. RP placed me and the male Smith on clean-up duty, and by the time I finished I was so fucking pooped I didn't even feel like lifting my writing utensil. Things are changing. We always talked behind RP's back, but not within fucking ear-shot. Yet here, Mr. Smith was, telling me that he thinks more about fucking him in the back everyday. _

_RP always was an asshole, but he proved capable enough of a leader to ensure that we were able to hole out here since Day One with minimal loss – unless you want to count Chris' voluntary desertion or Craig's self-induced overdose as major losses. But he always preaches on and on about how if we just hold out a big longer, the military is going to come. To save us, take us to the special zones where hope… some semblance of sanity still exists. _

_I don't know if I should reveal the paper or not. The hard truth. Thing is, the knowledge is killing me and holding it from them is only making things worse… but the other truth is that whatever fragile web was holding all of us mismatched souls together is starting to break apart. What calamity will befall us if the fact that our biggest hope has just been quashed is revealed? I can already see the cracks in the thin ice… even Laura is trying to keep spirits up less and less now. _

_Rest of day went as normal. RP – cunt. The Smiths – weird. Laura – no longer an angel. Dole – closest thing to a buddy I have here. Probably should consider him one now. World like this, you need all the friends you can afford. Craig – buried. Danny – rotting, unburied, who knows what the hell has happened back in town since I made it back? I try not to think of what may have happened to Chris. Stevie – her depression continues. Didn't talk, barely ate – and it's not like she's full or anything. I can start to see her cheekbones outlined in her skin._

_Me – useless, floating by. Trying hard not to die. _

_It's funny when you actually think about it. Here we are, living in a world where all the rules have changed and we're surviving only by a thread. But as soon as you and your group manage to acquire enough shit, find a good enough place to hold out in, the mundaneness that permeated our old lives still finds ways to creep back in. _

_**January 8**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_I've been taking a look at our "medicine cabinet." Danny had some stuff on him, but it was not a lot and nothing that you'd see them selling behind the count of a hospice pharmacy. What we do have is eventually going to run out fast if we start to use it. It is a fortunate thing that none of us have gotten sick or injured yet – those who are still living, that is. _

_Stevie bumped her head in while I was doing so. She demanded to know what I was doing. I asked her what all this stuff was. She couldn't give me an answer for most of them. I asked her why, and she snapped back that she was just a student. She wasn't a real nurse or doctor. _

_I got out of there in a hurry afterwards. _

_**January 9**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_Another slow day. Had a shitty night's sleep, ate a shitty day's breakfast so far. Looking forward to shitty ass lunch and din-din later. That can of Campbell's seemed real appetizing yesterday although I never was too fond of Cream of Shroom. Maybe I'll fry up some rat and roach and use the soup as a curry. Yum-yum. The world has ended and moved on, and those who were left behind can't afford to be picky eaters. Ha ha. _

_Weird isn't it. Few weeks ago I was scared shitless for my life, hoping that things would settle down. Now that things have slightly done so – haven't seen an infected since I returned from town – I'm bored. Just walking around all day, looking out on the horizon for the rescue that's not coming despite everything RP spews. Occasionally doing a bit of hard work. But we don't even have to fend off infected lately. We're just bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. I'm the Chairman of the Bored. Almost hoping for something to happen. _

_**January 10**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_Thought back about the worst and best days of my life. _

_Worst: Too long to sum up. But some highlights – various childhood episodes, coming back to town to Mother's funeral, Father's unsolved disappearance a few days afterwards, that night I was drunk and left my daughter passed out cold on the floor of my office, the divorce, the end of the world, that whole fuck-up with Danny. _

_Best: Leaving home for the first time, my first paycheck, meeting Jess and marriage, Katie's birth, the day I stopped drinking for good._

_It's too bad that the world ended quickly after that before I could celebrate my soberness with what friends I had left. _

_Summary: My father was a dickwad, and I guess I am too. Runs in the family. But at least he was honest enough to never try and pretend that he was something he wasn't. Like a good guy who cared about anyone that wasn't himself or his cock. I'm certain Jess' life would've been much happier had she met someone else that day. _

_But she had to make the mistake of falling in love with me, to give me the time of my life. Yet I suppose that it was for the best. Katie wouldn't have been born without my part in that night. I'm so sorry for everything, and I wonder if they worry about the way I worry about them. _

_**January 11**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_Tried to play a game of ball in the field with Dole, the Smiths, and Laura today. Stevie declined our offer to do so, and she just sat in the field and watched. RP did not show up, and when he did, he just chewed us out on getting distracted from what was important. Well, forgive us for trying to escape from the mundane bits of post-Pandemic America. _

_While we played our game of ball, I looked around at the deserted stretches of AstroTurf. There was just something that didn't feel right. I'm not sure what it was. I did my best not to think about the kids that once had their PE classes in this very spot, and what could have happened to them. _

_Struck out. Never was very good at ball._

_**January 12**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_Worst thing about getting accustomed to the mundaneness of your lifestyle is that even so, nothing is set in stone, and everything that can happen can still happen. When the stuff you hope doesn't happen winds up happening, it hits you in your routine face like a fucking bullet train. _

_Today, Stevie and I were placed on watch by RP. She seemed to be a bit different today, like her depression had finally lifted. She was even willing to talk to me, despite us not really having done so before at all. I asked her why she was acting so glum lately. She said that all the shit that had happened since the outbreak made her reconsider things, start having breakdowns and such. _

_She hadn't even wanted to go into med school for reasons that didn't involve paychecks. She had thought that she was the shit, but when all the real shit came crashing down in the past few months, she couldn't even remember half the crap she had learned at school. In short, she felt useless, and that as the sole person here with any real medical experience she wasn't even doing a third of what she could've been contributing to our mutual cause to survive._

_I told her that her being around was still better than her not being around, since hey, she still had more medical knowledge than the rest of us. She didn't say anything after I told her this, but afterwards, she asked me a question that forced me to lie. _

_Was the military still coming? Would we one day be rescued from this hell?_

_I told her yes. After I said that, I heard the great sound of a large mass flapping their wings. I turned my head away from her and saw a massive flock of birds flying away. So many birds that they darkened the sky. I had never seen that many birds in one place. It was like one of those old nature docs that bemoaned the loss of spectacles such as that thanks to the ever encroaching presence of man on this globe. I asked her where she thought they were going. I felt jealous of them, to be honest. They still had somewhere to fly to. For them, the apocalypse may as well not have happened. _

_When I heard no answer after minutes, I turned around. She was dead, blood dripping down her now-stained sleeve. Near her slumped body was a scalpel that she had used to do the deed. I didn't know what to say to her. I didn't know her very well, and I never had anything nice to think about her when I did. I didn't even know if I should say something nice to her. After all, she was dead. She wasn't even going to hear. _

_I vomited over the side of the building and then as the taste of bile left my mouth, I ran to get the others. RP didn't even tell us to give her a proper burial. Just had us drag her body way out past our perimeters and toss it away._

_Jesus Fucking Christ. D-A-M-N. What is happening to this world I used to know?_

_**January 15**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_It has been three days since Stevie killed herself. There's been a somber air around here. She was the first of us to really go by her own choice. I mean, Chris may be dead right now, but we didn't see him die. Craig was the first of us to die, but I don't think that he had planned to overdose and die deliberately. But Stevie, she was the first of us to kill herself, and I suppose this has made some doubts among the rest of us. _

_I wonder why she did it. I mean, she seemed much happier than she had been days before her death. There was nothing in her conversation to me before she slit her wrists that indicated she wanted to die. I wonder why. Maybe she couldn't take it anymore. Or maybe she was just tired of surviving in a world where there's no purpose to do so other than for tomorrow. _

_I think RP is planning another one of his morale restoring speeches soon. You know, I think that it's finally time to spill the beans. They're going to hate me for it, but after her death, I've decided that I can't sit on this anymore. In a time like this, when there's no telling what may come tomorrow – no way of knowing if the skies will ever be blue again, we need the truth._

_**January 16**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_RP made his grand speech this morning. He talked about how despite the recent passings of our "chums" we have to endure and cling onto hope. Hope that if we endure, the military will one day come to rescue us. Of course, he said it a lot fancier, but that was the basic gist of the bullshit he was telling us. _

_Right after he stopped speaking, I finally got the balls to pipe up. Called him out, said that what he saying was bullshit. I swear that bastard was about to explode from anger after ripping out my lungs before I whipped out the paper with the headline that the military had pretty much left us for fucking dead. _

_You could feel the collective hopes of everyone in that room just go fucking boom at that one moment. RP got a funny look on his face, said he had to go somewhere private and think about what we would do next. If I had to guess, probably the jakes to go wack off because certainly there ain't going to be much pleasure in the days to come. _

_I don't know if I did the right thing today. Maybe I never will. _

_**January 20**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_We just spent the last couple of days pretty much just milling about. Nobody is sure of anything now that the truth is out. We hardly even touched our food and stuff because after all, since nobody is coming to save us, saving it has just become a hundred times more important. _

_Nothing to write about. _

_RP is like a ghost now. Hardly saw him over these past few days. He doesn't want to be seen. Must be tough on him – having his world come crashing down on him like that. If he wasn't such a dickwad, I'd feel sorry for him. _

_On the plus side, at least we haven't see any infected or their spores about. Of course, even now, we still haven't bothered to clear the whole school. So there's still the risk of one day opening the wrong door…and bam!_

_**January 21th, 2014**_

_RP made another big speech today, finally having grown his mental balls back to size. He said that in spite of recent developments, we are not moving. He says that we're experienced enough, we know the area well enough, and we have enough to hole up here for good. Create a safe-zone to rebuild civilization – in his own words: heck, even attract other survivors to form our own community! _

_Looks like the asshole has been reading too many comic books lately. Can't say he's been watching TV because even though we have crude electricity running via generators and TVs leftover in the classrooms, there's nothing broadcasting anymore._

_Nothing but static._

_But can't argue with the guy. At least this is a decent place to stay for the long haul. And I'm in no hurry to go explore whatever's become of the rest of the world after that whole fuck-up back in town. _

_**January 30**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_For the past couple of days, we've been moving like ants. Fortifying the place with what we have. Little time to write, little time to think or remember. I have a feeling that eventually we are going to have to make another expedition. After all, the generators may grant us the beauty of limited electricity, but they burn through the fuel supply fast. It's not just gas too – as stated, we are ultimately going to run out of food and supplies yet again. _

_I just hope I'm not picked again. _

_And before I tune in tonight, I briefly am troubled by the thought that in the long run the town too will run out of things that we can use, and in those last days, we'll be forced to move out of here._

_Into whatever hells await in the new world. _


	16. Rushed Fourth of July Nonspecial

By Kaiser n Hilden

* * *

><p>Months had passed since the choice he had made at the hospital in Salt Lake City, and just as long a span of time had passed since the choice she had made in turn when they returned to the settlement near the dam in Wyoming. After that hectic year, after completing the journey of a chaotic lifetime with her, Joel wasn't exactly certain just how things were going to turn out at Jackson. Especially with the knowledge of what he had done to make sure Ellie made it to his brother's settlement in one piece. Even after she brought his lie, Joel worried that somehow Ellie would find out about what really happened regarding the Fireflies. Who knew how'd the kid react to that? Heck, it could be mighty catastrophic if someone else like Tommy found out, too.<p>

But things had passed surprisingly swell. It wasn't the easiest of things, getting accommodated to this sort of lifestyle. Nonetheless, both he and Ellie seemed to adjust surprisingly well to life at Jackson. Things were different here. For the first time, he had felt the feelings of community that he had thought lost long ago. Maybe Tommy really was onto something here… but then again, Joel remembered the early days, how similar the attempts to rebuild were to Jackson, and just how easily everything fell apart. Of course, he didn't bring any of this up to Tommy. It would only lead to an argument neither of them would ever win.

Joel yawned as he finished the last of his breakfast. He stared at the window, Ellie's knife resting on the windowsill. Almost absentmindedly, he wondered where Ellie had went. That was another change. Here was a place that was safe. He was still as protective of her as a mother grizzly of her cubs, but here, it was a place where he could let Ellie wander about without having to worry about her getting caught by bandits or torn to bits by the infected. But still… he wondered, was this a truly safe place? He supposed this was what would forever separate him from his younger brother.

Joel got up, strapped on his guns and backpack just in case. Tommy had put him to work on the Dam after he and Ellie returned to Jackson. He didn't do any of the complicated techy stuff that went into giving Jackson its electrical power, but worked as a sentry at the gates. He greeted the occasional drifter that bumped into the Dam the same way he and Ellie had been greeted. The drifters, most of the time, weren't trouble at all. Most of them moved on, some of them stayed. Joel had been concerned about this, mostly due to just how much resource they could spare, but Tommy insisted that they let their community be open.

He had been surprised at just how mellow day-to-day life at Jackson and the Dam were. Bandit attacks were few and infrequent, and when they did happen, the bandits were sloppy and easily fought off. Tommy was convinced that their numbers were dropping like flies, but Joel felt that the numbers weren't dropping – after all, he had yet to explore most of the neighboring wilderness – the bandits probably just decided that Tommy's settlement wasn't worth it.

Joel moved on, deciding to not linger on his thoughts for too long. He, after all, had work to do. After work, he'd go and find Ellie. To just talk and such, see how she was doing, if there was anything he could do for her, etc.

* * *

><p>"Have you seen Tommy around here? I poked my head in his office earlier and there wasn't any sign of him." Joel asked the woman patrolling next to him. She was one of the drifters that chose to stay, although he supposed that was only because of the expanding bulge in her belly that was bound to break its water any day now. Tallish, blonde. Pair of dog tags that hung around her neck that she was mighty protective of. She shook her head. He didn't know her name or where she came from before reaching the Dam, and it wasn't important enough to bother finding out. He doubted anyone knew what it was. Kept quiet, simply did what was required.<p>

"Looking for Tommy, I hear?" Maria called down from below as she was cleaning a batch of guns. Joel looked down at his brother's wife and nodded. "Yeah, that's what I thought. The workers seem to think that you're being awfully nosy today about Tommy's absence."

"I just find it awfully odd." Joel said. "Not really like Tommy, to miss a day of work like this. Especially when maintenance of the Dam is so goddamn important – no matter how many uninterrupted days we've gone so far, this system still ain't flawless."

"Whatever you say, Tex. Don't you know that date it is?"

"Well, I reckon hearing that the last days of May came and went a while back. Made it through June… I guess all the June bugs that keep smashing into the windows at night were a sign of that. So I suppose that July has already arrived."

"Yeah, you do remember what folks like us used to do during the first week of July right? It doesn't happen annually because after all, we've got to carefully watch just how much of our stuff we use but sometimes Tommy feels that after a particularly 'successful' season that the community deserves…"

"You have got to be kidding." Joel sighed and got back to work.

* * *

><p>"Hey, Tommy. Whatcha doin'?" Tommy, carrying a box of dusty DVDs in his hands as he walked from his house, turned his head to see Ellie on her horse. She rode it alongside him as he walked.<p>

"Oh, not much, Ellie." Tommy said to her, his voice friendly and willing to disclose. "Just setting up a few things for the evening…"

"What's happening?"

"It's been a good year. Hardly any trouble has happened here since last fall. We had a good harvest, plus enough surpluses. Joel will probably tell you otherwise, but I feel that we can afford to throw a little party to celebrate our luck. And unless my hand-made calendar is wrong, I suppose that today would be the fourth of July. No better time to celebrate than the day we used to back when this was a country…" Tommy said.

"So what exactly makes this day so special?" Ellie asked him, half-interested.

"You mean you don't know?" Tommy asked her. "I mean, no one ever bothered teaching you your history?"

"Well, let's that say that everyone from the military to the Fireflies to Joel was far more interested in teaching me how to survive or learning about you know… instead of a bunch of stuff that's all in the past."

"In the past? I suppose… but I remember all the good times Joel and I had as kids during this day and I can't help but think that if we're going to try to be what may very well be the last bastion of free civilization in America, we should have a standard of what to live up to, if you know what I'm trying to say. I know it's a bit much, but do you get what I'm saying?"

"Not really." Ellie said. "Care to actually tell me why this day is so important?"

"I'm busy, Ellie. The projector isn't going to set itself up, the meat isn't going to cook itself… but hey, go ask Joel. I'm sure he'd be willing enough to tell you… and you two are always welcome to hop in on our 'festivities' later if you want…"

* * *

><p>It was late in the afternoon, about five-thirty, when Ellie finally returned from her wanderings to the home in the settlement that had become her and Joel's since the two of them returned to Jackson. After what had happened in Salt Lake City… what had truly happened there. Still, she supposed that it was the best place she lived that she could call a home in her short years of life. And he finally was a friend in her life that hadn't left her behind. But still, she couldn't help but feel horrible knowing that what made her immune couldn't be said of millions elsewhere. Like Riley, Tess, Sam, so on… and she also wondered what had happened to Marlene. She supposed that maybe it was for the best that she didn't have the faintest clue to what really happened at the hospital after she blacked out. No telling what her guilt would make her do if the truth came to light, and it was less than pleasant.<p>

As she gripped the handle of the doorknob and pulled the front door open, she could see bright sunlight cutting into the room. Specks of dust flowed in the beams of light. The whole room was brilliantly lit, the shadowy corners small and rare. No sign of the red sunset that would burn the horizon, or the furtive shadows of twilight that would consume what was left.

Joel was sitting near the windowsill where she had set her old pocketknife. He was looking at something in his hands. As Ellie crept closer, he saw that it was her broken Walkman, and she had a brief flash of memory to the night long ago when it played for the last time. Joel seemed deeply absorbed in whatever thoughts he was having, so much so that he did not notice Ellie coming up to him. Before anything else could happen, she gathered in her breath and gave out a loud "Boo!" right as she stepped up to Joel.

Joel gave up a surprised shout as he grabbed for a gun that wasn't there, but he calmed down as soon as he saw that it was Ellie. He groaned in good nature as Ellie let out a small chuckle at the success of her prank. He then turned to her, showed her the Walkman.

"Ellie, this is yours, right?"

"Yeah. So what about it, Joel?"

"I noticed it happened to be broken." Joel said.

"Why were you rummaging through my stuff, Joel?"

"Never mind that, Ellie. I just happened to think, well this sorta stuff ain't exactly in my line of expertise, but there's plenty a person at the Dam who could probably fix this up in a jiffy in their free time."

"Sure, I'd like that. But the thing is Joel… I don't have anything to listen to. But as an old friend once said… my taste in music was crap anyhow."

"Hah." Joel commented. "What's a kid like you doing with one of these relics anyhow?"

"I just happened to have it." Ellie said, leaving out the story. "But Joel, can I ask you something?"

"What is it, Ellie?"

"Well, your bro seems to be acting like today is a special day or something. He seems intent on setting up the projector and showing one of his corny old movies. Even mentioned something about festivities, and how we're free to join him. So tell me, Joel, why is the fourth of July such a special time?"

Joel sighed. "It's a long story, Ellie."

"Well, we got plenty of time. Not like we're going to be going on another country-wide trek again." She smiled. "I can hear it."

"As you know, Ellie, this whole desolate bandit and infected-filled wasteland that we traveled across used to be a country called the US of A. It wasn't always that way. Long before even my generation, this place used to be a tiny crop of colonies along the East coast with a few big cities like Boston way before it got bombed out and reduced to a quarantine zone that belonged to an overseas empire. Some of the people back then got tired of living under an empire's flag. And to cut a long story short, they started a war and managed to win. July 4th just happens to be a day celebrated since then because that was when they declared their independence."

Ellie blinked at him. "Wait… so basically, you're saying that people in your day essentially celebrated the start of a war that got who knows how many people killed, fought by a bunch of people who were long dead by the time their fourths rolled by?"

"Um…" Joel said. "Pretty much."

"You know, Joel, whenever I hear you or Tommy talk about the days before the pandemic, I can't decide if your world was the coolest or most fucked up place in the world. But anyways, why were people back then so eager to celebrate such an ancient day?"

"Back then, we had a thing called national pride. We were proud of being Americans… and since July 4th was such a monumental day, our pride culminated yearly in a big celebration."

"Really? Why exactly were you so proud of being part of one specific country where there were probably like a hundred more in the world back then?"

Joel thought for a while about the life he had lived before the pandemic sent everything to hell, a life that was a fled, taunting dream in the nightmare that the world lived in. Then he thought of what had become of the last vestiges of what had been the old country, the final collapse of the ideals that it may have once stood for, behind the tall fences of quarantine.

"I don't remember. Maybe it was just like St. Patrick's Day or Thanksgiving. Another excuse to pig out and get drunk – just celebrate. But back then, believe me Ellie, people really got into it. You sorta had to be there to see the things we did… amazing and saddening at the same time to think about just how much I took for granted back then. Now, most of what we did back in those days is gone and probably ain't ever coming back round these parts. Some you learn to miss, but others… well, let's just say there's an empty feeling or worse when you realize you ain't ever going to see or do it again."

"Like what?"

"Fireworks, for instance. I really doubt that even our resources would allow Tommy to craft up a bunch of good 'ol red, white, and blue rockets to light up the sky."

"And why exactly were you blowing up rockets?" Ellie question.

"Well… they made loud noises and looked good." Joel answered.

"Really?"

"That's the gist of it." Joel sighed.

"Huh. Well, Tommy told me that he has real fond memories of celebrating today with you when you guys were like even younger than me…"

"Yeah, so do I, when I bother to remember them. And it ain't just the celebrations we had when we were kids that I can remember. There were a few good ones… long after we grew up." Joel sighed. "You know, maybe we can visit Tommy later. Just to see how far he's going with this and to grab a bite or two. But in the meantime, Ellie…"

"What?"

"Care to let me teach you another one?" Joel walked over to the other side of the room they were in, took a dusty black case and walked back. He unzipped it, pulling out a brown acoustic guitar. Joel sat the guitar on his knee, doing his best to tune the old instrument.

"Sure, I don't see why not." Ellie said.

"This is an oldie from way back before my time. Heck, I don't even think that it was a song originally, but that's what it ended up as. This happened to be one that always got played around this time, and there's even a couple of lyrics to it. I can teach you those if you want as well…"

"Go ahead. We've got plenty of time… all the time in the world."


	17. Ellie Goes to the Dentist

By Brian (original concept) and Sven (scripting)

* * *

><p>Tommy had sent them to an abandoned town not too far from Jackson and the Dam to see if Joel and Ellie could find anything that his settlement could use. But first they had run into trouble.<p>

"Ah… I love the smell of napalm in the morning… er, afternoon." Joel commented as he switched the flamethrower off, taking in the smell of burnt bloater shell. He kicked the corpse as Ellie searched the room. Bits and pieces of the bloater's charbroiled shell continued to fall off as Joel beat it, but there was no sign of the man that this thing surely must have been once. "But anyway… I'm glad that's all over with. Thing came right out of nowhere. Damn near scared the living daylights out of me."

"Was it just me, or did something about that bloater seem off?" Ellie asked as she approached a row of vending machines that still happened to be intact. She thought about how she had never had one of these fabled soft drinks in her life as she waited for Joel to answer. She saw Joel bending over the glass remnants of a broken jar that were mixed with several green olives on the dirty ground of the long abandoned convenience store they stood in.

"What do you mean, Ellie?" Joel asked. He shook his head. These could have been his first olives in who knows how long, and out of nowhere that bloater came and ruined everything. Joel could've sworn that it had deliberately grabbed the jar of olives from his hands before trying to kill him. The five second rule wouldn't work here, not by any stretch of his imagination.

"Well, I saw that you were having trouble opening that jar. It almost seemed like that bloater was trying to help you open it… but broke it by 'accident.'"

"Accident, Ellie? Don't bother joking about stuff like that. It just happened to break the jar before it broke me."

"It looked like it only tried making a move for you once you shot it…"

"Huh. Well, I doubt it was trying to help me open it. Intelligent altruist bloaters? What sort of silly bullshit is this? Goddamn…" Joel kicked one of the olives away.

"Anyways, Joel…" Ellie used the butt of her rifle to beat the front side of one of the vending machines open. She watched a row of red, green, and orange cans tumble forward as they stopped rolling at her feet, and bent over to pick up two cans. "Care for a drink?"

"Ellie, do you know how old that can is?"

"You seemed pretty eager to eat those equally ancient olives, Joel…"

"Well, those were in a jar made of glass! That is in a can made of aluminum! There's a difference, you know!"

"How?"

"Um… I'm just not thirsty, ok?" Joel said.

"Fine then. More for me." Ellie popped open the cans.

"You're lucky there ain't no such thing as a dentist in these parts anymore, kid…" Joel sighed as he watched Ellie chug down the two soda bottles. He reckoned he would probably have a real hard time trying to explain things to Tommy when he and Ellie returned from this supply-run with her with one hell of a stomach ache.

* * *

><p>Hours later they rode back to the dam with two bags full of scavenged supplies. Joel rode fast as he could, but in spite of the speed, the pace of the horse's gallop was rhythmic and almost comfortable. As she held onto Joel, Ellie felt herself getting tired. She even felt that just maybe, there was a bit of a funny feeling bubbling in her body at this very second. Come to think of it, maybe she should have thought a bit more before downing those two sodas, but she had been rather eager to see what cola tasted like… Joel was going on about one of those sports they used to play in his day.<p>

"And you see, the person who threw the balls at the batter was called a pitcher. And there were different types of 'pitches' he'd throw at the batter. If the batter missed the ball when he swung at it, it would be called a strike… swing three strikes in a row, and well, the batter would be called out. So, Ellie, you interested in… Ellie?" Joel took a brief glance over his shoulder as he carefully navigated the horse through the highway lane's rotting car husks, and he saw that Ellie was fast asleep, softly humming as she clung onto his body ever so tightly.

"Well… I guess I'll take that as a no…" Joel said. Still, he couldn't help but wonder just what exactly Ellie was dreaming about right now. After all that had happened to her the course of one remarkable year, coupled with all that she had dealt with through the sequence of her entire life, no doubt that there'd be some very peculiar things floating about in her subconscious.

* * *

><p>Light begin flowing in through cracks in her eyelids. The sound of something whirring began to trickle through the tunnel of her ears. They must've returned to Tommy's settlement by now, and she yawned as her eyelids blinked repeatedly as they adjusted from the dark of sleep to the bright lights of the waking world. But something was off, Ellie suddenly realized. Where she was, she definitely wasn't on the saddle of a horse behind Joel and this sure as hell wasn't the house that Tommy had lent to them. This was… a car. How the hell did she get in a fucking car? Then she realized that she had to be dreaming weird things… again.<p>

She looked to the front of the car, at the driver's seat. It wasn't Joel. A woman she didn't recognize was holding her hands on the wheel. Something was odd about that woman, even for the standards of Ellie's dreams. Whenever Ellie looked at the woman's face, there weren't any distinctive features. Her face, simply put, was a vague blur. But what disturbed Ellie was not that there wasn't really a face on this woman besides the blur, but rather the feeling that somehow, she and this woman were closer than she actually knew. There was a sort of connection between her and this woman that Ellie felt as she nervously gripped the door-handle, planning to make a run for it as soon as the car stopped.

"Excuse me…" Ellie asked. "But where exactly am I?"

"Ellie… don't you remember?" The woman asked her, her voice warm but detached. "We're heading to the dentist's, silly girl."

"What the fuck?" Ellie asked, completely confused.

"Ellie, I know Marlene doesn't give a damn about that sort of language and to honest nobody does anymore in this world and while I may trust you with her better than I do anybody else, I do." The woman sighed.

Ellie looked out the window. In her dream, she was riding through Boston… but it wasn't the way she remembered it, with all the curfews and giant fences and stone-cold soldiers walking about with their rifles. No signs of dismal people being led out of houses as soldiers scanned them. Everything… felt alive and wonderful. Not the way she knew it. People walking through streets without fear or resignation, like the Pandemic had never happened. Vendors selling foods that she had only dreamed of tasting right in front of her eyes as the car sped by. From behind the car window, she could see hundreds… no, thousands of things that she would never be able to do in her life because all these belong to a long-gone era… but in her dream, she could do anything. But she was powerless to step out of the car, for the driver would not stop no matter how many times Ellie asked her to. Unable to join the world she never knew…

"Goddamn it, just one small bite of a hot dog!" Ellie asked the driver. "That's all I want…"

"I'm sorry, but you should know how stringy your dentist can get when you show up even half a second behind schedule." The woman shook her head. "Believe me, Ellie, I don't want this anymore than you do, but you have to keep up a pretty smile… they love you, Ellie, they all do. Millions…"

"What the hell does that mean?"

"It's easier if you try not to understand. But still, it's nice, isn't it?" The woman asked her.

"Yeah, I guess." Ellie said as she gazed out the window at the sights passing by. "But still… I think it'd look even nicer if you'd just slow down and let me enjoy the fucking view."

"It's the way everything used to be… before all hell broke loose and we all slowly lost sight of what it meant to be human… so many things that used to matter back then have been forgotten, replaced by some things much much worse…"

"Yeah, I know what you mean… people can get pretty fucked up." Ellie said, thinking back to winter. But her thoughts then turned to spring. "But there are still the sights worth living for, even in a world as messed up as mine."

"Hmm..." The woman paused, as if she had something she wished to say to Ellie but couldn't find exactly the right words to. Then the car screeched to a stop. Ellie looked. They were in a quaint, lakeside town. There was a sleepy atmosphere, far less people and cars than she had seen in Boston. Like everything in this dream, there seemed to be something off. Like this whole town in front of her was just a playset someone had set up to mess with her… rather than something solid and physical…

"We're here, Ellie. The dentist's office should just be a brisk walk away. Go ahead, I've already signed you in."

"Wait… you drove me here, and now you're just going to leave me on my own?" Ellie asked the woman.

"We all gotta learn how to strike out for ourselves, Ellie… and it's something that you've learned better than I ever could have hoped for." The woman seemed to smile, but it was hard to tell through the incoherent blur that was her face.

"Whatever…" Ellie grumbled as she walked out.

* * *

><p>She was walking past a street of empty shops and rental houses when she heard the clicks. Her blood chilled, her body instinctively crouched and began to slowly move forward as she tried to focus, pinpoint the location of the clicks. Ellie held her breath, looked carefully at the ground she was treading for any bit of debris that would give her away to the bodies that were once human, but now overtaken by infection which had warped them into something… something else. But she was different than everyone else… she was special. And after all that had happened to her, since she found out that she was unable to lose her mind as her best friend did, Ellie had no idea whether her immunity to the infection that had ravaged the entire world and evolved it into the near-feral state it had become was a curse or not. It was good, knowing that she did not face the same fears that others like Joel did, did not have to live by the precautions they took to avoid the deadly spores and other means of infection. But her immunity left her with guilt as so many that had she had let grow close to her fell to the infection and all she could do was watch. She thought that the Fireflies would be able to do something with her, to prevent more people from going like Riley or Henry or Tess. She remembered the shock she'd felt when she'd woken up in a car speeding away, with Joel at the wheel, no sign of any Fireflies about. She was lost in her thoughts, conflicted about what to do after hearing what Joel told her had happened, but in the end, she followed his advice. Found something new to fight for.<p>

She saw the clickers in the parking lot behind a drive-thru espresso stand, just lingering about. There were three of them, dressed in varying manners of decayed clothing that hung off their mutated bodies in rotten tatters. Ellie reached for her pocket-knife, only to find that it wasn't on her. She looked in the distance. At the far end of the lot was a building that had a large sign labeled "Lakeside Dentistry" and it appeared to be the only building in this town that wasn't devoid of life. Standing between her and the dentist's office were the clickers. She wondered how she'd be able to pass the clickers without her trusty pocket-knife. And there were no bricks or other scattered objects that seemed loud enough to draw their attentions away to a different spot. But there was another way… and so Ellie took a deep breath and ran.

The clickers sprang to vicious life, as Ellie darted past them. She ran in zig-zags, hoping that the erratic placements of her steps as she ran would confuse the hell of their echo-whatever they used to locate prey such as her. She felt like her lungs would burst, her legs would run out of the strength to run, and she would find herself torn to bits by their merciless teeth every step as she ran towards the dentist's office. But Ellie trudged forward in spite of her rapidly declining stamina, the bursting volcano of fearful tension rushing up her spine, towards the dentist's office. The clickers remained hot on her heels. But she had to know why. Why was the dentist's office so important in this dream of hers before she woke up.

With her final pant of frenzied breath, Ellie leapt forward to the door of the dentist's office. From inside, someone opened it for her. Ellie frantically made her way inside, but she saw no one that could've opened the door from inside. But she had little time to think about this because the clickers still had her on their minds. She showed them the finger, although they could not see the lewdness of Ellie, before she slammed the door into their faces. She heard them clicking in agony as they banged on the door, but it would not budge. She was safe. Yet she felt uneasy. She thought she had recognized the remains of clothing on the clickers… as well as whom they may once have been. And she thought… was there anybody still in that distorted body? Powerless to do anything as they lost their humanity, first in spirit, then in body where nothing resembled what once was?

Ellie panted, taking in breaths of air. She was putting way too much thought into some weird things her mind had cooked up for her in this dream.

* * *

><p>Ellie staggered into the waiting room. It was empty devoid of all life besides her and the receptionist. She walked over to the desk, and slammed her hand loudly in front of the receptionist, who had her nose buried in a book. The receptionist lowered her book, and to Ellie's surprise, it was Marlene. There was a large bullet hole where her forehead should've been. There seemed to be disappointment in what was left of her eyes, like she was rather sore with something Ellie had done.<p>

"Marlene? What the hell are you doing here?" Ellie asked.

"It'll be better if you don't think too deeply. Just try to accept things for what they are." Marlene croaked, her voice distorted as if she had been underneath the ground for a long time and had just clawed her way back out. "You know, when we found out about your immunity, we had such high hopes. All of us did…"

"Um, Marlene, what the hell are you talking about?"

"Think back, Ellie. You know what happened." Marlene shook her head, bits falling out as she did. Now things were getting real fucking weird. "Anne signed you off so trustingly… she knew that there was no one else better suited to look after you in the world as it was… but somebody thought differently. I knew you since the day you came out of the womb. He knew you for what, a year at most? I knew what you would have wanted…"

"This is not ringing any bells. Seriously."

Then nonchalant, Marlene replied. "The dentist will see you in a few minutes. He's been booked to the brim today, always has been, but he's looking forward to taking a look at you most of all. Why don't you take a seat over there?"

Groaning, Ellie walked over to a small table of magazines and books. She picked one up, eager to see what pre-Pandemic words lay in the bound pages. But only disappointment followed as she flipped through the pages. There were no coherent words or structure. Just a jumble of letters on some pages. Absolute blank on others.

She kicked the table of useless reading materials over. Marlene didn't seem to notice or mind as she did this. Ellie sighed, bored, and kicked back. She whistled to pass the time.

* * *

><p>"Ellie?" Marlene called out. "It's time. The dentist wishes to see you."<p>

"About fucking time. How long is a dream supposed to last?" Ellie muttered, surprised that she had not bored herself awake. Marlene opened for her a door to a dark room, and without anywhere else to go, Ellie went through. Marlene shut it behind her as she did. Ellie looked around, her eyes adjusting to the dark. She thought she heard noises. Then someone turned on the lights. The sudden flash blinded her, and Ellie braced for any abrupt attacks. Someone was standing in front of her. His head looked like it had been split apart several times by a sharp blade. But she recognized him and sighed.

"You."

"You really were somethin' special, kid. And now I'm gonna see what made you so different from the rest." David smiled at her as he put on a surgical mask.

"As if I'm going to follow you anywhere, cocksucker." Ellie flashed him the finger, causing David to shake his head in disappointment.

"Come now, Ellie. Ain't like there's anywhere else for you to wonder off to in this little office of mine. I know you kids hate seein' the dentist, but trust me, it's better the quicker you get it over with." Before she could move, he jabbed a needle into her neck. She felt woozy, and tired. In spite of her best attempts to resist, her eyes fluttered shut.

As Ellie came to, she noticed that she had been strapped down to a dentist's chair in a room of them. A bright light was glaring above her face, making it hard for her to look straight up. She tried to resist, to break free. As she turned her head to the side to avoid the blinding light, she noticed that strapped to the other chairs were infected. A runner, a stalker, a clicker, and even a bloater. All of them thrashing and screaming, trying to escape. She saw at the stool next to the clicker's chair David, who was humming as he cleaned the clicker's teeth with his dentist's tools. He turned his attention to Ellie and he noticed the light.

"My apologies." He adjusted the light and then he stood over Ellie with a toothbrush in one hand and a drill in the other. "Now, let's have a look at you Ellie, shall we?"

"Fuck you, David."

"Now, now… now ain't exactly the time for fucks, is it? You're all tied up, no weapons to spare, and this time nobody's coming to save you." He pushed a button, and the drill whirred to life.

"You think I'm scared of you, David?"

"I don't know… but I know that you certainly thought about me a lot." David smiled at her. Then he frowned. "You know, Ellie, I would've kept you safe. I would've given you shelter. A lot of friends to play with. You'd never be alone again. All you had to do was change a bit of your dietary preferences, that's all."

"Right… because eating fucking people is just a bit of a change in diets, right?" Ellie spat at David.

"You weren't there! You know nothing about me… the sacrifices I had to make in order to ensure that my people and I would survive!" David shouted back. "You were special, Ellie. We could've used someone like you! In time, the rest of them would've saw just what an asset you would've been! A small fry like yourself, and already you were bagging fucking bucks. But no, Ellie, you just had to have things your way!"

"And I still will!" Ellie shouted. She managed to wiggle one of her legs free. As David walked over to her, prepared to force her mouth open and put the drill in, she quickly kicked David somewhere painful. David screamed and dropped the drill, and coincidentally it went through her bindings, drilling Ellie free. She stood over David, ready to turn his tools on him once more.

"Come on, Ellie… try to see things from my perspective. Like Harper Lee once wrote, take a walk in my shoes for a bit…" David sweated.

"I don't know who the fuck that is. And I don't care." Ellie spat on David who inched away as she advanced on him. "You know, David, you showed me just how fucked up things really can get in this world. And even after you were nothing more than a bloodsplatter on the ground, you forced me to think about certain things. Like how bad I can get when pushed hard enough by a shit like you. I nearly lost myself and would have had it not been for the giraffes… but I won't have none of your bullshit anymore. Time for an unscheduled check-up, David!"

David screamed, but before Ellie could bring a drill down, she felt a strong hand clamp on her shoulder. A familiar voice called out to her from the dark abyss she found herself in.

"This worm ain't worth your time anymore, Ellie."

* * *

><p>With a gasp, Ellie returned to the world of the wake.<p>

"Bout time you stirred." Joel said. They were still on the horse.

"Where are we, Joel?"

"Just about nearing home, Ellie. End of the path. You'll be eating a mighty hearty dinner in no time." Joel assured her. "So, what did you dream about? That gasp didn't make it sound like anything particularly happy-go-lucky."

"Oh, it was nothing important. Just a mish-mash of stuff." Ellie said, thinking about the people she had met in her dream and the places she had gone.

"Well, dreams are like that. I've had my share of weird dreams as well. There was this one time I dreamed that it was the Wild West and I was one of them gunslinging outlaws, and I was hired to bring you across the country to one of the Indian tribes to clear the bounty placed on my head. And then there are the other weird ones, like the one where it was me who died that night and instead it was Sarah who took you to Salt Lake. And the one I really hate it is the one where it turns out we're just actors in some twisted take on our lives like one of those video games Sarah used to play. Any other words, Ellie?"

"I really shouldn't have drunk those sodas, Joel."

"Don't say I didn't warn ya, kiddo." Joel chuckled and Ellie did as well.

"Just one question, Joel…" Ellie asked him as they rode home.

"What, Ellie?"

"Was going to the dentist really that bad?" She asked him.

What a bizarre question to ask, especially in a time like this, in a world like this. But still, he might as well tell her what he could remember. And he began. "Oh, Ellie, you have no idea…"


	18. Goodbye Blue Sky: Reflection

_**March 2**__**nd**__**, 2014**_

_March already? Second day? Hadn't noticed. Unless what we have that passes for a calendar is lying to me. Wonder what happened to the teach who had this room. Wonder what they'd think about all this chickenscratch we've carved into the whiteboard. Any real calendar left hanging on the school walls was out of date with the arrival of the New Year. And I doubt even RP would be dumb enough to send another expedition to town just to search for a 2014 calendar. But if it does come to that, I hope we find one with nice pictures of kittens on it. Keeps the mind off of the shitty stuff for just a brief while._

_February was banal. Nothing worth writing down. Nobody died. No failures. No shortages. But I supposed I should be grateful that I'm alive and nothing bad happened. But instead I constantly find myself thinking about all the things that have been lost forever, then a tidbit of information such as the number of bear species in the world pops into my mind and I'm surprised that I remembered this and realize that there's so many more important things I've forgotten. _

_God help me. I've already forgotten so much because the only thing that seems to matter anymore is staying alive. Friends from childhood and adulthood, people I swore I would never forget, blown away like dust in the wind. Fuck it, I can hardly remember what my parents looked and sounded like anymore. It's only been a few months since that world ended but… The only people from before that I can still recall clearly are Jessie and Katie. And that's probably only because of the pictures in the wallet I still carry on me._

_Money… ha. What good is it now? To think that once upon a time our lives revolved around the color green. Now life has a whole new rat race. _

_And today I remembered a quote I read in the funnies section of the paper when I was a kid. _

_It's never so bad that it can't get worse._

_Hope. Mustn't lose hope. That's what RP says. Think happy thoughts._

_At least it hasn't snowed for a while. There, one happy thought. _

_**March 3**__**rd**__**, 2014**_

_When I was eight, my father hit my mother so hard that he left her sprawled out on the kitchen floor. She didn't move for two whole hours. I spent the entirety of those two hours begging for her to wake up, certain that she was dead. When I looked at my father with my accusing eyes, I think it was one of the few times he felt genuine remorse for what he did to her. But his remorse was never permanent. _

_After about a minute of cold silence between the two of us, he went out to get another beer. _

_**March 4**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_Today was another slow day. Found myself on watch duty. Alternated between peering through the scope of a rifle and sitting back absolutely bored as I took in the scenery that lay before me. I found myself wondering about the infected. What was it like for them, the people who had become the stuff of nightmares? What scared me the most about them was how human they looked… yet all the subtle differences that indicated they were becoming something that wasn't. A struggle between man and the beast. Due to this, I always hesitated whenever I had one of them in my line of sight. Was it fear? Pity? I don't know yet._

_Waited my whole shift for one of the infected to come into sight. But today, nothing wandered past the perimeter where RP ordered us to start shooting. Not even a damn squirrel. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear there was nothing out there anymore. But I couldn't help but think about what remains besides the infected. _

_What will happen to everything that was left behind, now that there's nobody to care for it anymore? Will the landmarks – the Rushmores and Memorials – rot as nobody is left to care for them as our cities crumble and decay back to the basic parts that had constructed our sprawling metropolises? Years of civilization in the making… brought down by one bad day. Will we ever rise to the star-bound heights that America had soared to again? So many questions… so many answers I'd rather not think about. _

_But then my thoughts drifted towards other things. How whenever I returned to my hometown, the surrounding wilderness that I remembered from my childhood seemed to shrink vastly with each visit with a new McDonald's or Starbucks or whatever in the place where trees had once been. General stories of pollution and such that I had glanced by as I scrolled over on the Internet. Even that damn movie that had all the subtlety of a hammer to the head. I wondered how different everything would look with less of us around to mess with it… and I actually managed to smile. But then that smile died as I realized I'd probably be long dead… by the time any of that rolled around. _

_When Laura came to take over the watch, she asked me what was wrong. I asked her why she was being so damn nosy, and then felt bad about it afterwards. Don't even know why I snapped at her. But she seemed to take no apparent sign of discomfort from my words, and as such I didn't apologize to her. I just walked away._

_To cheer myself up, I tried to whistle the tunes to a cartoon I watched as a kid when my father wasn't camped in front of the TV with booze in his hand. But I then I realized that I had forgotten what it had sounded like. Couldn't even remember what the show was about, really. I felt something leaving me, but I wasn't sure what._

_**March 7**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_I remember how fascinated we as a pop-culture devouring population seemed to be obsessed with the post-apocalyptic genre. To the possible future reader of this journal (assuming my rambles here survive long enough to be read by eyes other than mine), you know what I'm talking about if you were there at the time. If you don't… if you're one of those inevitable births after the fall… you just need to look around you. _

_How right were we, after decades of movies and TV and comics and so on, when the apocalypse finally came and left us here? Well, I suppose that no one could've seen what ultimately ended civilization as we knew it. Not the superflu, not North Korea's nuclear wet dream (wonder how they're taking all of this), not some super volcano-quake-tornado-of-science-defying-Hollywood proportions… I don't suppose anyone could've seen this coming. Except for those assholes who surely knew what was imminent as the signs cropped up… and didn't bother to do a damn thing about it before… you know the drill._

_What caused the downfall of the human race as we knew it… not aliens. Not machines of our making gone horribly wrong. And especially not the vampire uprising of 20XX. The closest thing to the Infected… zombies, I suppose. Pop culture had quite the fetish for the walking dead right around the time everything went to hell. But then again… what have nearly killed me so many goddamn times since September, what have plagued my dreams… those unfortunate bastards that got infected by Cordyceps aren't dead, are they? At least, not in the physical sense. _

_I probably shouldn't be too ungrateful, in spite of the general shithole that myself and everyone else (how many of us are left? Shit, I really don't want to think about this one) finds themselves in. Things could be much worse. So much worse. _

_1. Super-Infected. Post-infection, those things are pretty damn stupid. But I get a shiver when I think about just how fucked we'd really be if those things still retained a bit of IQ. If they remembered how to use guns, drive… shit. _

_2. Last Man on Earth. Granted, there's no way of knowing that you actually are the LMOE, but at least I'm not alone. I think everything… the shitty state I'm in… the shitty things that have happened/I have done in the past… would have. Struggling to find words here… I'd probably have swallowed the last round from my gun's business end a long time ago if I were without any human company. That's all I'll say. _

_3. RP is an asshole, no doubt about that. But you know… at least he isn't a crazy asshole like Danny was before I… you know what happened. Another scary thought popped into my head. In this world… how many of us are like that crazy kid? _

_4. All of those things I mentioned earlier like aliens inexplicably showing up. _

_On the flip side…_

_1. What happened to those you left behind. Jess and Katie. Two names that have been going through my head like a ringing phone that'll never be picked up. Not knowing. Jesus Fucking Christ, I think it's even worse not knowing what's become of them than it is knowing that they're conclusively 100% no-questions-asked dead. Fuck ambiguity. Fuck the possibility and the last second bait-and-switch. _

_2. One thing they got right. When you finally catch the chance to grab your breath… what the hell can you do after you've seen your final TV broadcast or clicked your last web-link? Laz around bored out of your skull, like RP seems to do whenever he isn't in "I'm your leader" mode. What can you do besides survive? If it weren't for this journal, I'd probably have turned to playing tic-tac-toe with my right arm to pass the time by now. _

_3. The thought that yes… it will happen. You'll run out of supplies, you'll all turn on each other for the last can of beans, you'll become the monster you sought to escape, etc. All the clichés that just loved to line up in every single story of the post-apocalypse ever written. If there ever was a time for life to not emulate the movies, now would be it._

_4. I'd rather be holed up in a shopping mall than a damn high school. _

_That's all I have to say today._

_**March 10**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_Someone at this school sure loved himself the Savage Starlight comics. Found an entire volume's worth in mint-condition hidden in one of the rooms behind the teacher's desk. If some resourceful soul turns out to be the reincarnation of Tesla and gets the Internet working again, I bet these could fetch a damn fortune. Especially if everyone else does to their copies what I think they're going to be doing when the last scrap of shit-stained toilet paper gets blown away. Sorry to whomever owned these books, but that's just survival priorities for ya. Everyone's gotta shit. _

_**March 11**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_On my watch shift today, what seemed to be the fifth day of nothing in a row, I tried to pass the time by reading through Savage Starlight. Gave up after the second issue. Just not my thing. Tossed the books aside. Let whoever's up here next decide what to do with them. Out there, on the road, in between the abandoned cars, there was a discarded paper that blew by with the breeze. I watched its pages flutter as it made its way to wherever the wind would take it. _

_Thought about the comics I did read as a child. Long before I found myself reclining back, looking at nothing, with a rifle in hand. Probably not the best person to judge the sci-fi adventures of whatever the hell Savage Starlight is about. Especially considering my favorite CBs as a kid involved impossibly-muscular men wearing their undies on the outside and anatomically-baffling women in skin-tight spandex beating the shit out of each other. AKA the superhero genre. _

_But it wasn't really the mindless fights or Power Girl's cleavage that kept me reading every month back in the "good" old days. _

_Rather, it was the feeling of hope that came up when I read. The pure heroism present in those pages… people with all the power in the world… who could rule the world with the snap of a finger and yet they chose to help the little people who could've just been forgotten… As a young product of a quasi-broken household, there was something in them that I could connect to. Something to look up to. _

_Then the bearded bastards Moore and Miller came, and they fucked up the industry in a way no one could've foreseen. Gradually, everything got darker. Everything got fucked up. And given how fucked up my real life could become on part of my father… why the hell would I want to read anything that didn't provide a joyous escape from the harshness that I found myself walking through every day? _

_I'm sorry if you had no idea what I just wrote about, but I didn't feel like going into too much detail. Don't want to remember too much. But anyways, I stopped reading the funny books. Years later, maybe a year or two before the end of the old world, a while after the divorce and shortly after my father disappeared, I tried to get into the comics again._

_But I couldn't. Just couldn't connect to the pictures and characters the way I did as a child. I just had to accept that the printed world had moved on without me. The comics they made today were for their generation, not mine. And besides, I was a loser in all senses… but I still considered myself above hijacking an internet forum to talk about the "good" old days. _

_For the record, all the times of the world have sucked. But they didn't have the privilege of the rose-tinted glasses until September. _

_As I thought about childhood – the good, the bad, and the ugly times – a squirrel skittered into sight from out of the woods. Wondered what had startled it. Then I saw. An infected. Demented beast straight out of hell. It was a woman, I think. Messy brown hair. One bloodshot eye. Teeth that would make a dentist run for the nearest open window. And shit… I can't even describe what sort of shit was growing out of her other one. And it wasn't just the head that was starting to look deformed via fungus. _

_Then it turned its head. I swallowed, aimed and prayed that there were no others in the vicinity of the abandoned houses that surrounded the school, and fired. _

_As her head splattered into fragments and red mist… I thought that the times we lived in back then may have sucked… but no matter how bad – it can only get worse from here. _

_At least we still had the false notion of change and hope to cling onto back then. For a lack of a better word… we had heroes. What do we have now? Nothing but ourselves._

_**March 15**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_Dole and the Male Smith had an argument over a fucking bag of Pacific Cola. Jesus Christ. One can of soda, and these guys looked like they were willing to tear each other's heads off over it. This isn't going to last, is it? The Female Smith and I broke it up, but this won't be the last time. It was a mutual feeling that reflected in our eyes as I looked at her. _

_We may be the goddamn Fellowship when it's time to fight off the Infected or run for our lives… but what happens when supplies start running low again? When we get tired of each other? Will it come down to every man for themselves? New world, new rules… and I'm not starting to like some of these rules…_

_**March 16**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_I've been thinking about RP. Effective leader, 100% asshole. Never seems to run out of motivational speeches straight out of Hollywood to pull from his ass. But why has he, out of all of us disparate souls threaded together, chosen to play leader? Does he genuinely care about us or is this just one goddamn power fantasy playing out in his mind? _

_But whatever reason, he's hellbent on making this high school a safe zone. And he isn't going to budge no matter what the rest of us have to say. _

_It's not like I think that the Quarantine Zone would be any better… but if anything, I'd trust even the remnants of our government to do a better job than RP keeping these things alive in the long run. But hell, like I'm going to tell that to his face. I don't want to end up as infected bait or be sent on another incursion into town. _

_I suppose that for now… the best I can do is float on. Make the best of the situation that RP's building around us best as I can. Just how can we turn his power trip to benefit us? Only time will tell… but it's fortunate that we seem to have all the time in the world now, at the end of the world. _

_I'll definitely keep this "journal" of mine updated._

_**March 18**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_Near my hometown was a moderate-sized lake. Tranquil atmosphere, blue water beneath a blue sky. There was an abandoned rowboat at the shore, just a few steps from the farthest reaches of the waves at noon. Who did it used to belong to? Nobody knew. But my father decided to make it his. My father just was that sort. Every month he'd take a drive to the lake when nobody else was there. He always went when the sky was blue, and the water was bright as the sun reflected off of it. Sometimes he'd take me and my mother when he wasn't in one of those moods. _

_None of us dared get in the boat with him as he rowed to the center. Rowed to the center of the lake and stopped. Once he was there, he just was there. He didn't do anything. No swimming, no fishing, no nothing. He just waited at the center of the lake in the boat for as long as he pleased and eventually he'd row back. Often, when he returned, he'd be in one of those moods. _

_I asked my mother once why he went in the boat._

_She didn't know._

_Perhaps it was just to get away from us all. To reflect in complete isolation. Perhaps that's why he always came back in those damn moods. Ranting his mind off about Vietnam, draft-dodging hippies, the disappointments that we were, anything that crossed his mind. He took a moment to reflect and what he saw looking back in the lake water wasn't pleasant.  
><em>

_Just a few short years ago, I went back to that lake. Far away from everybody I knew. Long after everything else had already happened. Burials, divorces, addiction, lay-offs... I tried to reflect on everything that had happened since May 25, 1977. Tried to find some answer about myself, about the world... why things had happened the way they did, why I became who I was. I wish I could say I had a life-shattering revelation at the final minute as I listened to the soft waves lap against the side of that decaying old rowboat... that I was turning my life around right before the infection hit. But the truth is... there was no lesson learned.  
><em>

_I rowed back to the shore, no less a stranger to myself than I had been before. I took one final look at the lake, and feeling a tear welling in my eyes, I swore to never come to this place again. _

__Then I walked away. __


	19. Post-Revolution

A short piece by Kaiser (plotting) and Sven (scripts)

* * *

><p><em><strong>A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another. – Mao Zedong <strong>_

_**You say you want a revolution  
>Well, you know<br>We all want to change the world  
>You tell me that it's evolution<br>Well, you know  
>We all want to change the world<strong>_

_**But when you talk about destruction**_  
><em><strong>Don't you know that you can count me out?<strong>_

_**-Revolution, The Beatles **_

_In the end, we didn't even need the Fireflies. Sure, they may have taught us how to fire guns like the soldiers and all the other basic training needs. I'm not discrediting their services. After all… a bit of training is better than no training at all, is it? But when the military made their big push, did the Fireflies stand their ground to the last man? No, they fled the city. To the hellhole run by merciless bandits led by no one but themselves that was once Oakland, to the bombed-out infection-infested skeleton that was once Daly City, to anywhere that would take them far away from San Francisco. But who could really blame them? It had been twenty years since the CBI outbreak first spread its ugly wings. It had been a losing war ever since for everybody. I suppose that they had enough of this battle. All in all, they may have helped light the powder keg, but they had packed their bags way before the fireworks. _

_In the end, perhaps it was the military overseers that kept us "safe" who caused their own downfall. Before the big push that kicked the Fireflies from San Francisco, the Fireflies had ramped up the frequency and intensity of their terrorist attacks. One too many civilians – the same civilians they were trying to incite to rise up – got caught up in the bombings. To the point where some people were even cheering as our oppressors kicked our would've-been liberators out of this city. But the Fireflies… thanks to their use of plainclothes infiltrators and such… they got the overseers paranoid. _

_They should've left us, the people, alone after they won the long-fought battle for control of San Francisco. Perhaps we might've appreciated their continued tyranny, if only for the end of the bombings and other revolutionary acts that had taken their toll on our support for the yellowjackets. But instead… they made even bigger pushes to rid the city of any radical roots that posed a threat to security. _

_The military pushed too hard. One too many unannounced search-and-seizures. Cut rations to punish us all for the perceived actions of an imaginary few, and announcement of bribes for those who'd play fingerpointer. Stricter curfews, crueler punishments. Too many friends and family who'd disappear in the middle of night. And what do you get when you piss off a populace who greatly outnumbers you and have finally had enough? _

_Revolution. _

_It was no easy feat, that was for certain. We began our revolt in the Spring of Anno Domini 2033 and ended it as the last winds of winter had blown the next year. They had the upper hand at first. Our revolt wasn't the first. They had experience and the advantage in tech. We lost all the battles at first. But eventually, they had to give. And when they say what we did to the corpses of their fallen comrades, the rate at which they were losing the districts of the QZ, any soldier who wasn't dead or gone turncoat went the way of the Firefly. I won't sugarcoat it, say that we were the righteous underdog heroes battling against the black knights. We only did what we thought was right, but there were just as many bastards on our side as theirs. _

* * *

><p>"What are you writing?"<p>

The man glanced briefly at the woman. For a woman who had been a kid when CBI broke out, who had gone through twenty brutal years of survival in this world and had helped spearhead the revolution that ousted the military regime, he thought she still looked damn remarkable in spite of all the abuse that she had endured to survive. Of course, it wasn't like he had gone to hell himself. Ever since society as they knew it had fallen, death and infection all around them, it seemed that everyone had their own hell. Everyone… no doubts about it. Even the those with the most innocent of appearances, the purest of actions, were amongst the guilty. No one in this world could've survived for twenty years just by playing by the rules of fair play. But the trip to hell wasn't a one-way ticket.

The man thought about it, believed in that bit of philosophy. It was what had kept him from pulling the trigger the many times he had crawled to a place where no one would ever find him. Rested with the barrel in his mouth, against his head… anywhere where the shot would kill him instantly and free him from the burden of surviving to the next morning. There had to be something that was still worth living for. That would keep him from lying down and waiting for his ferryman like so many friends and family had these twenty years. When something knocks you down, you don't stay down. You get up again and hit them right back. That was the lesson he'd learned in a rough and tumble childhood out in the desolate reservation where he'd lived as a child, out in the Midwest which seemed merely a dream after twenty years of running as far as he could without knowing where he was going.

What was worth living for changed often. First it had been getting into San Francisco after the Quarantine Zone closed its gates, with bloody reprisal to outsiders who did not heed the warning. Then came the uprising. The successful revolution. Now, what did he have to look forward to? Helping build a new society… one that would not make the same mistakes that the government remnants or the ragtag bands of survivors did. And there was a more personal matter. That embodied hope… being forged in the woman's womb.

"It's nothing, really." She set whatever she had been writing aside. She let the man feel her growing belly. Just a few more months. Hard to believe… that amidst all the fighting, the non-stop scramble to stay alive, that this had happened. Was it the right thing to do, to bring a child into a world like this? The child would never know the world that was a paradise in retrospect that she had been born into. Never know a world other than this living hell. But she supposed that it was her responsibility now to make that life-to-be as far from hell as she could.

"What are we going to name it?"

"I don't know. But if it is a boy, I'd name it..." She told him the name. It had no significance to him. But why would it? The man was not her. That name, the person she'd known who'd carried it, was only significant to her and her alone.

"Why?"

"It was my father's name."

"Did he die?"

"I know for sure that my mother did. Caught the infection early on. It was a nasty way to become acquainted to the new way things worked. My own mother, trying to chase me down… trying to kill me." She would've cried, but it had been twenty years. It had been a long time to become hardened… impenetrable… at least on her surface. "Worst of all were her eyes. Like they still recognized me as her daughter. Trying to fight the infection. Filled with regret at what she was doing… but there was nothing she could do but try to kill me. But my father… I never knew what happened to him in the end."

"Why?"

"Let's just say that we were separated. And eventually, I made my way here with a bigger group that I found. Most of them, those that were still left, died in the Revolution. I never found out what happened to him, he's just a complete mystery. And with the world as it is, it's not exactly like I can ring him up on his phone to find out what happened?"

"Did you try?"

"My mother didn't keep track of his phone. We tried calling the old house but nobody ever picked up. But that's all old news, my father and such. I think we should be more worried about the future…"

"Why? We won, didn't we? We kicked the military out… the city is ours. A free flag is hanging over San Francisco as the sun rises once more."

The man was too hopeful. The woman never told him this, but she thought often. Yet she had been in many "safe" zones during the course of her survival. How long had it been, for each of them, before human ugliness reared its head? Engineered the downfall… spat the survivors back into the gaping jaws of the hostile world? The military had spread news… or perhaps just stories… of fallen cities. Revolutions that had become horror stories. Overrun by infection and desolation… manned by survivors who had forsaken all old world morality. An orgy of theft, murder, rape… anarchy sold wholesale. Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Houston, the list went on. Only a few beacons of civilization left in the world, all under the watchful eyes, the iron fist of martial law. The military had promised security in exchange… protection from the infected and the lawless… and yet those promises had not been enough for the people in the end. What was going to happen now?

_Just the other day, I met with others at what used to be Pier 39. I heard that there used to be sea lions at the docks there. But with a city full of starving people… I suppose that the animals had learned to stay away, to find a new place to rest. After all, there is always another place in this world. We had to decide what to do with Brandon. He had helped us. He had charisma… a sort of post-pandemic JFK, if you will. He could sway the masses better than the rest of us. That was the problem. Brandon wasn't exactly the most stable of survivors. He wanted vengeance upon the military. He tried to have the students at the military school executed after we took the district where it was located. He did begin… would've executed every damn kid with his bare hands had we not convinced him that they still could be of use. _

_And he believed in expanding our reaches. To conquer the lawless regions that neighbor San Francisco with the goodies that the military left behind. One functional tank… several armored cars… even a working helicopter. Enough fuel to make them last a while. And he also wished for us to close our doors. To treat any other survivors that wandered into the city as hostiles, to be shot on sight. He insisted that there were too many mouths to feed as it were. _

_The meeting began civilly. I thought that things were going to end well. Brandon had apologized for making a few executive moves without our say-so. He apologized for his behavior, promised that it would be the last of it. Yet, as Brandon turned his back while making a few more suggestions for us to consider, Annie piped up. _

_Said he was too damn volatile to be trusted. And we had struggled too long to get what we had achieved with our revolution for a damn firehead like him to bring it all crashing down. As Brandon turned his head to rebuttle her, she hit him in the head with the shovel. None of us did a thing while she beat him to death. None of us tried to stop her. None of us bothered to check if Brandon was still alive when she lifted him, tied weights to his body, and dumped him into the murky water by the pier. Only after the plunk of the splash, and while his body was surely floating to the bottom, did anyone bother to say anything. Nothing came of it. Then we all went our separate ways. No more talk about how we were going to handle things. Like infection outbreaks. Or water. Or power. All the things that we were going to need to know if we don't want this city collapsing all around us. _

_What's going to become of us, if our first solution to a problem is to hit it over the head with a shovel until it's dead? How will we be able to cooperate when it's become clear that we mix as well as oil and water? Will the horror stories become true for us? What's going to become of me? Of him? Of our child? Is it going to last? Can we build something better with the chance we have? Or are we just another ragged band of lawless survivors, the last ofus living by the teeth in the dirt amongst the ruins of skyscrapers, in the making?  
><em>

_He would tell me to think positive thoughts. He's placing all his hope into the child... into the society that we are building. I should, too. _

_I still think we did the right thing by overthrowing our military overseers. I don't regret picking the road that I did. Things had boiled to that point, it was inevitable. But we won't know if the uprising will lead to good things for us. We won't know this for a long time. Perhaps we never will._

_But we will have to try. And I pray that no matter how rough the road ahead of us is, it will never come to what I fear. _


	20. True Love Waits at the End of the World

**Or A Tale of a Madwoman in a Mad World  
><strong>

**by Lilly and Brian**

* * *

><p>Welcome to a fallen world.<p>

The signs had been there. So many chances for the world to band together and put a stop to the calamity before it struck. But the vitals were ignored. People went on hating the same people, worrying the same worries, and never glanced once at the iceberg in their path until it was too late. Ten months ago, the world ended. Chaos enveloped the entire globe, an all-encompassing fungi that consumed what had been and would forever alter what would be. Some reacted to the horror with the hatred of old as entire nations were torn apart not by the infected but by the fire of the manmade God, others attempted to salvage what they could in spite of paltry odds. Families torn apart in split seconds, friends eying one another's backs in a new light in the name of survival, what little sanity and order left retreating to their walled fortresses. But in time, the ruins glanced in the initial aftermath would degrade further as aftershocks further changed the rules of the games.

The United States of America. A nation built on marvelous idealism and deals made in murky shadows. Once a jewel that stretched from sea to shining sea, now a series of pock-marked cities littering a landscape molded with the remnants of man that once was. What had once there, there now was naught. And as such, a traveler came to such a place where those who hadn't fallen in the first days fled to a place where perhaps they'd be safe. All that left were memories he did not know. Oh America, what hath become of thee? One might thing as they observed the flags waving unwatched, never to be lowered again, until the elements took their toll and rotted them back to the purity of Earth that had shaped the stars and stripes.

Wind blew stray papers and decayed fast food burger boxes along the roads, underneath the gutted wreck of a rusty pick-up. The near silent grumble of an engine broke the tranquil of nothing as a jet-black Mustang from highways of yore entered the grounds of the town, off of the highway entrance. Squeezed through the near-clogged entrance of abandoned Fords and Toyotas like a rat through a hole. The Traveler said nothing, his eyes hidden by opaque lens. His hands were firm on wheel, foot on the pedal ready to unleash a flattening charge. Infected or "normal", the Traveler had killed his fair share in the past ten months. It had become as commonplace as ordering the Number whatever in the drive-thru in the past. It made him sick, but he had to do it to survive. It began to just happen, like the fall itself.

The Traveler brought the car to a stop in front of the gas station. Or what hadn't been burned to black cinders and ash. The gas had exploded. Thousands of crumped leaves crunched under the heel of his boots as he stepped out of his car. He glanced backwards. The Passenger sat, her hands on her lap, not wearing a seatbelt. Her eyes were filled with nothing he could analyze. Tough luck. Nothing she could do about it now. She was a mysterious one. He'd come across her, sitting by the side of the road, strapped to the gear in equipment and weaponry. She looked worn and beaten, like she'd been on the run for long. There was a lot he'd want to learn about her, if they were going to be surviving together. But first, time for a smoke.

He stepped over the burned forms that were once human. As he lit his cigarette, he realized that he had just worn through his last pack of Camels. The Traveler frowned at this as he puffed on the cigarette, savoring the sweet nicotine. He shuffled through the shell of the station. He found nothing, realizing he had erred and wasted precious time, a scarcity treasured more than silk at the end of the world. Whatever useful had burned up with the station and flown away in the ashes, as the ember trail of the departing populace faded as the empire stopped to forever slumber.

Shaking his head. He walked back to the car. But before he opened the door to the driver's seat, he realized something. The back of the car, where he had kept the Passenger, was empty. Had she run out? But why? When he asked her if she wanted to come with him, she shook her Traveler's heart then skipped a beat as she jumped him from behind. Too surprised to react. A body overcome by sudden fright, unable to feel anything but sheer horror even as she plunged the small shank into him over and over again like a knife penetrating the blue frosting of a birthday cake. Must've missed it when he had stripped and searched her the first time! He managed to knock the shank out of her hand, just as he felt a sudden load leaving his body, but it did little use. She kicked him where it hurt the most, and he screamed. She hit him again, and the Traveler's face went smack into the pavement, his nose popping. The lens shattered and left shards in his eyes. She was kicking him, vicious.

"N-n-n-no" The Traveler heard himself stammering as he tried to crawl away, blubbering, begging for mercy as snot and blood dribbled out of his crushed nose. Tears, acidic and blinding, bubbled from his eyes. She stood over him. Judge, jury, and executioner. The Passenger held in her hands a large, bulky rock. Jagged. No mercy in her eyes.

"Please don't…" The Traveler was mumbling. "I wasn't going… to… h-hurt you…"

"I hate bad people like you." The only words the Passenger said before she lifted the rock and beat his head in, a bloated melon shattering to reveal to the world the red that was underneath, with it. Bad? He wasn't bad. He was going to help her. He had seen her by the side of the road, all alone. In a world where things were changing quickly, a lone woman faced many risks. People, those who hadn't gone mad, needed all the help they could get to survive. But he'd never know. He was long gone before she had finished slamming the rock upon his head. The Passenger, looking down at her handiwork for a brief second, said nothing as she tossed the rock aside and ran back to his car. Or her car, as the rules of survival now decreed.

* * *

><p><em>I hate bad people like you. <em>

_The last thing Maggie said to her captor of the past month, who had said he was going to keep her safe and take her to the big city where people were fixing everything. She knew that he was lying, no matter how nicely she said it. Maggie knew when people were tricking you, experience had taught her to never trust anyone unless they were really special. And he wasn't special. She knew that he was really planning to make her his dog. Defile her, hurt her. And she decided to hurt him before he could. Who had he been? It didn't matter. Nothing more than a stain on the pavement and a rotting carcass now. Bastard was a bad man, and he got what he deserved. _

_But truth be told, Maggie Locke's perception of the world had always been a little skewed. Not born this way, but warped this way. Her mother, she had been told, was Sioux drifter from one of the rotting reservations. Father was a businessman, happily the chairman of a good 'ol-fashioned nuclear family, but infected with a gambler's chancing. Maggie had been a product of one of Mr. Locke's gambles on a business trip gone awry. He had adopted her, not out of goodwill, but to get her mother's nagging out of his ears. And never had he warmed to her. After all, the good 'ol-fashioned nuclear family suddenly had an error in the equation when young Maggie was factored in. _

_Her stepmother, blamed her, not him. Bitterly she had fumed over this as she got older. It was her father's goddamn cock to blame. But maybe she enjoyed the feeling of it thrusting in and out of her clit far too much, and Maggie's very existence became the blemish upon Precious Ms. Locke's otherwise unblemished American Dream. But she dare not stand up against injustice, for the cards were all stacked against her. Her father who had no love for his half-breed bastard to hold back his fists. Why else did he send everyone out after a bad day at the office, before he opened his bottle? Her older brother viewed her as little more than cipher, an intangible ghost that passed through the walls. She did not remember his name, or what he had looked like in turn. Her half-sister, Patty, was the union of the worst of Father and Mother put together. Wherever her family had been when the first infected started to tear apart order by the seams, she hoped they had died painfully. Perhaps then they'd finally know the fear and hopelessness that defined memories of her childhood, that she blamed on their hands. _

* * *

><p>No longer the Passenger she was, but the Driver. She had driven far since she had disposed of the Traveler. Driven to a new town. The Driver listened to a few of the CDs that had been a possession of the previous rider that had fallen into her lap via improvised inheritance to help the drive past the emptiness and the wreckage past the minutes. It was a release by a band called the Blue Oyster Cult, a fire of unknown origin. She did not know much about the band, if she liked them or not, and wasn't sure if she had even heard one of their songs before. There were memories that the Driver tried her best to forget, but memories do not work in that manner. But she did remember that he, the one dear to her, had mentioned them as one of the classics.<p>

Where was he now?

Her hands tightened on the wheel as the singer of the band sung about sole survivors. Her foot pushed down on the pedal. The noise of the car had attracted them. It was what she had seen underneath the surface of her parents and her sister, beneath the smiling façade that they had presented to their peers. What brewed in the collective beating heart of humanity, what bad blood brewed and flowed through twisting veins. It was the majority, the mob rules. A great conglomerate to deny their true nature, a combine to harvest the happiness and hopes of those who fell out of line, who weren't meant to be like the Driver. But like an act of God, they had been restored to their true forms. What the Driver, in her young and frightened eyes, had seen in her family and others who surrounded her with their endless rows of suburban housing and garages filled with fancy cars and wardrobes of tailored suits. What was behind their lulling siren calls, what they took pills to repress. True reality. The American Scream. The wolf in sheep's clothing. She piled through them like bowling pins. They were mindless, savage. No longer in denial of their true nature. And she couldn't help but smile as Mustang crushed them to bits beneath its wheels. Out of the misery of her life came rage. It was hidden until now, a time where she could finally fight back against her oppressors.

The Driver slowed to halt as she left the expanses of that town, the windshields clearing away bits and pieces. She heard screaming. She exited the car. The Driver looked back. She saw the last of those monsters, its body returning to its true form as malignant growths overcame the skin of flesh it had worn. It ran to her, its one eye that hadn't been grown over glaring. Of course. They had never given up on tormenting her while things were their way, never stopped chasing her no matter how far she ran or how well she hid. Why would they have given up, even when they had been dealt their punishment, even when the playing field had finally be leveled?

The Driver imagined the face of one of her childhood tormentors on the infected. She whispered something as she unslung the rifle from her back and looked through the scope. And then she pulled the trigger.

* * *

><p><em>Half of Maggie's blood, her being, had come from the lineage of the Natives of this land. But her heritage was no bearer of pride for her. She knew nothing about her mother and her side of the family, nothing that mattered anyways. It had only provided more fuel for the playground taunts and mocking-in-private. At least she made it out before the Internet became big. Some people always longed for their childhood days. Maggie knew why. It was when they could run around absolutely vicious, no one to reprimand them with true judgment. But she, who had not been meant to be, received no such privilege. Half-breed, savage, Injun, redskin, Indian, terms that had she had heard so commonly that she felt nothing when she heard them used against her now. <em>

_She learned the words could do nothing for her. The fires of their hate only grew stronger the more she protested. And if she broke, it only gave them their victory. She learned quickly never to cry, at least not where they could see it. But she learned to hate. Bouncing between depression and ire like an endless game of Ping-Pong. Their hate taught her how to hate, how to trust only the diplomacy of the fist. Fought with other kids, fought with her sister. Frequencies that lowered, but never faded away, as she got older. For Maggie, grudges never were forgiven in her mind. Her hate and distrust simply grew too strong. Troubled, the older people called her. Never could they see how she was fighting back the only way she could, against an enemy she knew she never could beat. People thought Maggie the half-breed was crazy, stupid, adjectives that she could list 'till the last grain of sand fell to the bottom half. But she was smart. Smarter than she ever let them know. _

_She was not crazy. Not matter what they said or diagnosed her with. She did her best to hide her true feelings, knowing how outnumbered and alone she was. And she struck back silently, against the vast and faceless enemy she knew was the world. Vandalism, theft, everything she could think of and learn in her silent war. Let them call her troubled all they want. She stopped caring once it became clear nobody was coming to help her. _

_The last fight she had been in was with her sister, in their last year of high. It was after she'd finally reached her breaking point, and didn't care anymore. She'd been hurt especially after she'd grabbed her sister by the throat before they tumbled down the staircase, but she'd hurt her enemy so good doing so her pain didn't matter. Maggie didn't even remember what words her parents had yelled at her when they broke it up. There were faded scars from the ordeal still on her face, but she didn't mind them. They served as a reminder. Never to trust the mob, only to depend on herself and the special._

_But the special were rare. Before she met him, inexistent even. So unable to trust most anyone she came across, Maggie decided that being alone was preferable to company of any sort. _

* * *

><p>"H…help me." How long had the man been stuck in that ditch, his leg pinned, making all hopes of getting out of there in one piece moot? The Driver didn't care. Life was what you made it, and sometimes, a lonely death in the middle of the wastes was what you got. Yet here he was, reaching out for the Driver to come for him. Cooing for him, like an infant yearning for a mother's nipple. The Driver looked away with disgust. Did he honestly think that he was going to fool her like this? He looked absolutely fine. Those cries of pain, those tears… the little fucker obviously was faking it. So he could lure her into a trap. More of his fellows obviously were in waiting. They were obviously planning to do things to her. She had seen them, in the days after everything ended.<p>

"You're… you're a good person, right? You wouldn't let me – argh!" He cried as she shot him with her revolver. Fake flattery would get him nowhere. Those were the worst of them all. The rats who pretended to be your friend, only to stab you as soon as you were your most vulnerable. Her sister, and so many others… just like that. But if they thought they were going to get her like that ever again, they didn't know how fucked they were.

"You fucking psycho bitch! WHY?" He was crying and screaming obscenities at her. She didn't care. Words stopped meaning anything to her for good long ago. The Driver smirked at him, and flipped him the bird for the power it made her feel before she walked back to her own vehicle, to continue driving east.

* * *

><p><em>She didn't go to college. Maggie Locke, age 18 and a grown-up at last, didn't even bother graduating high school. In a spring morning, before anyone else was up, Maggie Locke had snuck into her parents' wallets and "borrowed" several bucks to last her a good while. Stealing from her parents left no blight upon her conscious. She decided that bad people deserved to have bad things happen to them, and who was bad – she ultimately decided that. Grabbed belongings that didn't have any strong memories to the place she'd grown up, and she walked out of the Locke house. Hotwired a car. Who did it belong to? She didn't know, but she was certain that it was someone bad so she didn't feel bad about it. <em>

_Maggie figured that now she was a grown-up, she no longer had to bide by their rules. It was time to live freely, do whatever the hell she wanted to do. It was good to be free, while things lasted. Maggie felt into the company of various bad sorts, shifting through her company like grains of sand through the cracks in a finger. But she didn't mind. They were scum, but at least they were honest scam. They did not hide behind the smiling masks her tormentors had. It was a good time for all. Joyride into the horizon, at top speed. A joyride, a downward spiral into thrilled oblivion that went on for two years. But alas, all joyrides must come to a crashing halt. Not all getaways are clean. And not all of them get away. _

_Some they threw in the slammer, away with the key until their minds had rotted and they had become "fit" to rejoin society. But Maggie was a special case… in spite of her constant pleading to the contrary, they thought she was a rather troubled young woman. Rather than let her languish in the cells of jail as she shifted from shithole to shithole, they sent her to a very special place in the end. What and where was that place? Ask her, and she'd have trouble telling you. She remembers it differently with each passing day, the memories becoming more trivial as more continue to fall into the final fire. The only fact built in concrete was that it is where she's heading. Where she met him. The first place where she felt that perhaps she belonged. Where Maggie found the real world._

_What was his name? That was the oddest part. Couldn't quite remember it, either. Was it Mark? Matthew? It started with an M. Maybe Murphy. That sounded right… Maggie guessed. Why couldn't she remember even the things that mattered now? It didn't make her sad… but it bothered her._

* * *

><p>It was getting dark. The Driver had veered off the road as the sun was setting, to find a spot that she felt was just right. The Driver reached into the knapsack, taking out some food she'd taken from the last person she'd killed. This time, they had shot at her first. The Driver in return had killed them good and dead with her special new toy while the skinhead shits begged her not to scalp them. The Driver didn't know if her Indian ancestors ever scalped the white man, nor did she care, and furthermore, one couldn't quite scalp the bald man. Nigh she knew, the baldies were meant to be split like a log or smashed like the Whack-a-Mole at the 'ol county fair. The Driver could see ahead, as more people that were smart like her realized that things weren't ever going back. Things were only going to run out, and only the smart would know what to do with the growing scarcity, how to sustain the skeletal infant's malnourished cry for the nipple the deeper they fell.<p>

Her special new toy was long, pointy, and sharp. She'd built it from pieces and pieces she'd come across after she began her journey. Bound it with sharp wires she'd plucked so it would hurt even more when she hit someone with it. She was so proud of her special new toy. She'd built it. She was so crafty, craftier than those judgmental fucks back home had ever imagined. And she wasn't going to let anyone take it from her the way fuckheads aka sisters took the Christmas presents Grandma sent to _you _for themselves. The Driver would cry so much when it broke, but after her tears dried, she'd just build a new one and all would be well.

She hated the nights. Always, she could feel them. Hear them. Plotting against her. Just waiting for her to fall asleep so she could be vulnerable to their conspiracies. Often, she'd just huddle against her car and clutch her rifle to her breast until the sun rose. Of course, someone would say that doing that was bad for you. But who gave a fuck what they thought? Whoever they were, she hoped they'd died painfully, scared shitless as their perfect little world came crashing down around them.

* * *

><p>"<em>You don't look like a doctor." <em>

"_I'm dressed like one, aren't I?"_

"_No you don't. You don't move… you don't speak… like my other doctors."_

"_Well then… do I make you more comfortable then?" He said to Maggie as he looked down at a clipboard. What decade was this again? The Nineties? The Double-Ohs? Or more recently? Maggie had trouble remembering. Time treated her so strangely. Memories that she could remember clearly, that she remembered the same every time she tried to remember, they seemed so recent yet so far away. "It was why I was assigned to…"_

"_I don't know. Why the fuck should I be more comfortable? I just met you…" Maggie remembered fidgeting on her chair, knees curled up with her arms wrapped around them. _

"_We have to know you better if you want to be able to trust you. You've been uncooperative so far…an absolute enigma, some have said." _

"_I don't care what you think about me." _

"_The fact that you haven't said much suggests otherwise." _

"_I don't think you people deserve to know anything about me." _

"_They don't, maybe. But what about me?" She expected him to smile, let her know that things would be all right like the other fuckers in white had. But he didn't. He spoke to her a bit more, but she didn't hear his words. Just listened to how he spoke them. Decided to give him the rare benefit of the doubt. She told him about what bits of her childhood that didn't hurt to remember, how often and erratically she shifted from depression to anger to debauchery. Her beliefs, her philosophy, her inner workings. How once she had tried to kill herself with a knife but got too scared and couldn't finish making the cut. Before she could realize what a mistake she was making, she had turned herself in and out and given him the key that sprung the clockwork. _

"_This is more than you've told anyone before me." He said, looking down at his notes, at a later session. "I've noted something, Maggie." _

"_What?" _

"_You seem to shift all of your blame upon your peers. Family, former classmates, authority figures, so on… never a spot of blame upon your own shoulders."_

"_It is their fault. All of it."_

"_Lots of people are bullied or come from broken households. They, like you, feel they're all alone in the world and have trouble coping with it. But unlike you, these people have never fallen into criminality. They haven't taken from others, hurt others…"_

"_Have I really hurt anyone who didn't deserve it? I'm just paying back things." _

"_It seems you readjust everything to fit scenarios so that you're always in the right. I'm sure that you've heard that an eye for an eye blinds all. It's detrimental to your treatment, this flaw of yours…"_

"_It's not a flaw. I'm not readjusting anything. I'm just remembering things as they happened!"_

"_So you say… but Maggie, you have to understand, people aren't bad."_

"_Yes they are. There are only exceptions like…"_

"_No, there aren't exceptions. Good guys like me that you can trust, we are the majority. The bad people who hurt you, they're the minority. You have to learn to trust people, instead of assuming the worst about them, Maggie…"_

"_Why are you telling me this? You know you can't change me, no matter how hard you can try to." She said in a moment of utter clarity with herself, a rarity. She huddled deeper, clutching herself tightly as she could. "It's too late for that. No matter how much I try to convince myself that I'm the cowgirl riding into the sunset, everything I've done since I ran away from home amounts to nothing more than just one big tantrum. I'm a broken child, nothing left to show the world but my anger. I'm just too pissed off to fucking care anymore. I am a hopeless fucking wreck. They were right about me… hopeless, troubled, never will amount to anything, dumbass half-breed…" She needed a fucking drink as she said this. _

"_Self-deprecation is going to get you nowhere. What you have to learn is to let go of your past."_

"_Why are you doing this? Everyone else gave up on me. That's all I can remember. Failure, failure, failure…" _

"_Because I believe in you, Maggie Locke." _

_She looked up at him, wondering what the hell he meant by that. But at the same time, there was a part of her, just a small part, that felt glad he believed in her or least he claimed to._

_Sometime later, she'd been sent away. Or went away. Far west as she could. They gave her pills to take, and for a while, she felt… normal. What they thought as normal, as she took them. But she didn't like the way their pills made her feel, so she stopped taking them. And then she felt like the way she felt she should again. But she tried so badly to behave, lest she disappoint him. He was still calling her. Checking up on her… _

_It continued for a while. Then one day, he called her. His voice was full of panic. Pandemonium was in the background clutter. He was urgently asking her if she was alright. She had no idea what he was talking about before something cut the line, but she would find out soon._

_As the world fell. _

* * *

><p>At last, the trail had come to an end. West to East. Ten months of trudging forward, not sure what she was looking for. She left behind dead bodies and the smell of gunsmoke in her wake. Maggie Locke stepped out of the Mustang. She felt nothing as she looked upon the abandoned facility that she had once stayed at. In a few more years, it would crumble and the world would grow over the rot of what was left. No big loss. No one would remember what had once been here. Nothing but the sounds of her footsteps at first as she stepped over the fallen fence. She kicked down the door to the nearest entrance she reached. What awaited her as she squinted underneath the sunlight seeping in from cracks and broken windows. Dead bodies, empty corridors, and walls of white with red splotches and handprints. She stepped over them, not stopping to see if she recognized anyone. She probably forget anybody who had mattered. Past the once tranquil and orderly, ripped asunder in the chaotic span of a few days. Suicides, riots, hundreds trampled underneath, she saw it all. The bodies would rot, the carrion stripped away by the vermin and scavengers 'till bleached bone was all that remained. She walked past them without thinking much.<p>

Maggie didn't expect much. Lost track of time a while before she saw the spores and pulled on her gas mask. What matter was time now? Everyone shared the same profession at last… survival. But who would want to survive in a world like this? Only people who had seen this bubbling beneath the face of civility and decadence that had been presented the whole time, people like her, were ready to live. They'd drop like flies… and there'd be less people for her to have to kill… and that'd be good. She walked towards the room that she remembered. Where they had their sessions. As she walked, she didn't feel the current of the present or the incoming future. But her past… all around her, it rained. Childhood misery. Teenage angst. The lost woman trying to find her way in a mad, mad world. Faces, voices, what was real bubbling in and out of being. When they came for her, the running abominations and the stalking filth and the clicking death, were they what she perceived? But were her eyes seeing naught what was in front of her? The Driver shot through them, carved through them, walking forward as her clothes reddened. Bodies fell in her wake. She didn't hear them fall, even as she hacked through the head of the last of them and it splattered its blood in her face, causing her to blink. Registered nothing. Cutting away at the past, putting one final bullet and giving one final fucking finger to the shits who'd taught her everything she thought she knew about the world. It wasn't really about the whole infected thing anymore, not even about the end of the world. All she had to know, whatever it was, was to know that it had been put to rest. The last part.

At last, she reached the room. He was waiting there for her. Or at least, whatever his body had become. No recognition in his eyes as her foot made a soft sound on the messy floor, and what voice came out of his mangled face with no eyes as it turned to her was not his. It made things easy, as she split the top of his bloating, shelled head to pulpy flicks of gore with a bullet. No big loss, no guilt in killing him. He was already dead before she had reached him. All was put to rest… except for one thing… she understood what had to be done. She put the barrel of the gun in her mouth, readied herself for the end… she closed her eyes.

Her finger twitched, tightened.

All was well, all was…

It was so damn silly, so fucking contrived, this scenario she had almost placed herself in. She laughed as she removed the gun from her mouth, her voice echoing off the walls. All was gone but her… but when had loneliness ever been a detriment?

Sure, things had changed. It was living hell… but she'd gone through variations of hell all her life. Adjustment would be easy. And finally, this was a world where she no longer had to behave. To pretend that she was something that she'd never be.

She was laughing hard. The happiest she'd ever been in her life. She kicked his corpse. Flipped them all the finger. Fuck you, Dad. Fuck you, not-Mom. Fuck you, Patricia. And you know what, whatever-the-hell-your-name-was, Doctor? Fuck you, too! She stepped over the edge.

"I had to walk and drive all this way to find out… but I found out that in the end, I didn't need a single scrap of your help, asshole. I'm fine with who I am. Let go, just like you always fucking wanted me to."

Why else were they dead or taken by the infection? So many unanswered questions at the end of things. Why did some people like her never fit in? Why people like her family were so cruel to those who had never done a thing to them, other than exist? Why did so many people like the dead Doc feel the need to butt their heads in where it wasn't needed? But one question was answered. And it was an answer only she'd ever know, and she was satisfied with it.

Maggie tossed aside her pistol with only one bullet left in it near the body of Doc, and then she skipped out.

* * *

><p><em>She'd run after all hell broke loose. Maggie saw a great deal of horror in those confusing days. Sure, the zombie-like crazy people were pretty scary, but then, they were still few in number. Easy to outrun. It was all the fucking panic, and in the split second before the government swooped in with their false promises of restoring order and quarantine, she saw everything people were willing to do to survive. It confirmed everything she ever thought she knew about people underneath. Bad people, bad people, bad people everywhere. She hated bad people, and she avoided them, or killed them if they got in her way. <em>

_Maggie did only what she thought she had to do to survive._

_After the first month of running around and killing almost everyone that had tried to get close to her, Maggie had found a house far off in the countryside near the coast that quickly became abandoned. She hid up in the attic, laid her things on the floor, and had curled up as the clouds rolled away again. She cried, trying to register everything that had happened. But things were moving too fast. Her pills were gone, her old life – what shambles that had been hanging – gone, and she had killed so many fucking people. She'd be in big trouble if they ever caught up to her. No mercy._

_She learned nothing from this pathetic, wretched week. A lot about the world at large, but nothing about herself, what she needed to know most desperately. Maggie kept waiting, ready to die alone, until she had gotten the phone call. That was odd. She swore that all the lines had fallen since she had started running, and furthermore, her phone had run out of juice while she was at it. The screen was black. She swore it had been, yet it lit up in her hands like it was brand new. And through it, she could hear him speaking to her._

"_It's time to finish things."_

_Five words. _

_Just those five. But in that moment, she knew what she had to do. Bring things full circle. And so, she had gathered her things. Pushed all thoughts of suicide and sanity from her mind, and with her mind fragile and paranoid she set off for the East._

* * *

><p>Her treatment finished, Maggie rejoined this new world for real. She figured that she would enjoy her time, as short as it probably would be. She drove back west, while she tried to figure out what she'd do with herself. Maybe she'd try to find Patty and Daddy and her stepmommy and put things to an end for good with them, as well. After all, her new beginning couldn't start if she still had a few loose ends dangling. There were enough bullets to spare. And after that, what else could she do?<p>

In what used to be Colorado, she came across the kid. He was sitting by the side of the highway, an abandoned military vehicle nearby. He didn't look very much like a soldier, although he certainly looked like he had been brutalized by one. There was a revolver in his hands. He was looking over it, his finger resting on the trigger. He didn't hear her come up to him.

"Are you just going to look at it all day, sweetie, or are you going to be a big boy?" She asked him.

He looked up at her. His eyes looked tired, reddened and cracked. "Where… where did you come from?"

Maggie shrugged. "Does it matter?" She said, pointing to the world all around them.

"I guess not."

She sat down next to him, and she smiled at him. She took the gun out of his hands, and he let it go without much of a protest.

"Trust me, I've been there. You wouldn't have been able to do it. So, what's your name?"

"It's Peter." He said. "And you?"

"Mine's Maggie."

"Where'd you come from, Maggie?"

"East."

"They said I was sick… but I wasn't. I swore to them that I wasn't… but they kept studying me until they finally gave up. They were going to liquidate me, but I got wise before they could... shit... the things I did, the things I saw, I can't forget them… I got out, escaped from where they were holding me in the mountains. In one of those, but the gas ran out and most of my stuff is running low." Peter shook his head. "They're all gone, aren't they? My mom, my dad, my sister, all my friends… what month is it?"

"I don't know." She shrugged again. "I don't keep a calendar anymore. My mom, my dad, and my sister, they're probably dead as well, if that's any comfort."

"Oh God… it's hell. I'm never going to wake from this nightmare."

"Shh… don't cry. It's alright." Maggie said half-sympathetic, half-mocking, as she put her arm around his shoulder. "So what are you going to do now?"

"I don't know."

"You know, Peter, I've been thinking. You ever fit in, boy?"

"What? Well, I'm not too sure about it. Maybe I used to, but before all this went down, I started questioning. I no longer knew what I wanted… what I was going to do with my life, and before I could even start to figure it out, all this happened…"

"It's the end of the world, sure… but it doesn't have to be the end of ours, Peter." Maggie told him. "We could make the most we got out of a shitty world like this… We could make a good team… I'm a bit crazy, they say, so I understand if…"

"You think we'd do good together? I don't really know you, Maggie, but I suppose that you're better than no one." Peter looked up at her.

She could've just slit his throat then and there. She easily could've snuck up on the kid earlier, with him lost in his own world as she had stumbled upon him. But Maggie… she'd been so many things in her life. Victim, loser, cipher, rebel, anger, lunatic… but maybe it was finally time to see what being in control was like. The whole world was becoming a blank canvas for people like her and this lost boy to make their marks upon. If she was going to be a Queen, she'd also need a King. And this kid… she could guess that he'd be a King that would let his Queen call all the shots for a long time.

"Of course. You aren't going to get very far in that hunk of scrap, anyways." She pointed to his Jeep and then to her Mustang. "Your chariot awaits, Peter."

They walked together.

"What now? Are we going to the Quarantine Zone in Denver?"

"Maybe… but I don't really want to. Quarantine Zones, they're the old world. I never really fit in, back there." Maggie told him. "But there are a few bad people that I know… and I want to find them in case no one has taken care of them yet, I will. Why don't you drive, kid?" She tossed him the keys. He nodded.

They drove off. Maggie leaned against the window, looking out at the blue skies that were becoming dotted with clouds as they drove towards the behemoth of gray on the horizon. Good-bye to that, she thought.

"Can I play one of these, Maggie?" Peter asked, pointing towards one of the CDs.

"Sure. They're not mine, so I don't really care. Wanna tell me a bit more about yourself while you're making your mind up on which one? Like your sister, for example? We can trade stories about those vicious bitches."

"Watch your lip. My sister wasn't a fucking bitch." His face darkened. And Maggie was scared as their eyes locked. He wouldn't be as easy, malleable as she had assumed. But she eased as he eased a few minutes later, silent breath of relief. "But I'll tell you all about her. Her name was Kelsey…"


	21. Goodbye Blue Sky: All Ends

_**September 25**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_So today is September 25__th__, 2014. Tomorrow is the first anniversary of a very special date for all of us. It's been a while since I've had a chance to write about things. Much has happened since the last update. Maybe I should try my best to sum all of it up. Then again, perhaps not. I've spent a lot of time wondering why I even still bother keeping a journal. It's not like anyone is ever going to read this. If anything, the first thing anyone's gonna bother doing with my journals is hang onto them until it's time to hit the loo. If only I could've seen where it would all lead to, I wouldn't have gotten that English major. What good would it do me now? Bullets are what everyone wants, not words. _

_But I suppose I am obligated to keep writing my mind as we drift by, trying to survive. In case whoever that is reading this after I leave has different priorities than toilet paper or fire fuel. _

_The utopian "rebuild-society-from-the-dead-ground-up" that RP had in mind, whatever his far-reaching vision was, is no more. I guess we all saw it coming, except for him. But none of us did anything about it until bigger fish had shown up with more guns and organization than we did and forced us out of the school that had been our "sanctuary" since the world we knew fell. _

_It's been months since that. Too much of my time was spent trying to survive to even remember I still had all this paper on me. _

_Inevitable, some might say. But it didn't have to go down that way. They had been willing to negotiate. But RP's terms had been set in stone, unwilling to change. Idiot. Couldn't he see how well-armed they were? In spite of the façade of initial friendliness they had put up for us, they were trained. Unified. Like a fucking militia. And still he wanted to force them to play by his rules. I'm surprised it took as long as it did for them to lose their shit._

_They gave us the opportunity to stay at the school, integrate into their society. But other than Laura, none of us took the chance. No one said anything, no one stepped up or made any sort of decision for everyone. I just walked away, and the rest followed. What would the use be, of trading King RP for a new set of kings? Couldn't convince Laura otherwise, couldn't be convinced. _

_I'll miss her though. _

_RP's dead now. Can't say I that I shed any tears when he died, or that I miss him and his leadership. And for us, things could've gone worse. Nobody was dead at the end of it all. At least on the surface. _

_One last note. It's never something that I would've done if I had seen a dead man lying on the pavement with a pool of blood expanding all around him. But when I did it, I didn't even have a second thought about it until I had already begun riffling through RP's pockets. I'd hoped he'd have something on him, like a Driver's License, that would tell me what his real name was. _

_But he'd already trashed everything, from cards to cash. Maybe he did see ahead, and saw how what once made the world go round would never be needed again. And so he remained to us only as RP. _

_**September 26**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_After RP's death, Mr. and Ms. Smith took unofficial leadership. No one elected them, they never made any sort of statement, but it's obvious who calls the shots now. The two walking at the front of the line. We keep walking, picking up any supplies we find. The roads are scarce, the days long. We keep walking, but to where, I don't know. All I can do is hope that they know. _

_We took a tangent off the highway a while back. Now we're shuffling through the woods, following a map we picked up from a park station. The logic is that with the wilderness less populated, there'll be less of the infected in our path. _

_Dole bagged for us a rabbit and then we made a fire to cook it with. All the meat we come across is overcooked. Don't want to risk anything, now that the medical service is gone and we haven't picked up anyone who knows how to treat shit like stomach poisoning. A thought that's enough solace to almost mask the shit taste of the meat. But in this world, you've got to take what you get._

_Today's the anniversary. So as we sat around the fire, contemplating as we took bites from our scarce portions of burnt shit rabbit, one of us just had to bring the inevitable question up. His name was Sean. A few days after we left the school, we found him on the road. He was good with a rifle, and friendly enough, so we took him along._

_What were we doing a year ago?_

_Sean_

_When he saw that none of us wanted to be the first, Sean decided to throw himself into the fire. He'd been a police officer in a small town. It was his childhood dream, all he'd ever wanted to be. Someone who'd help people, take care of the bad guys. Sean'd been living his dream, although he never saw much action – what he called the type of stuff they showed on Cops – beyond drunks past curfew and parking violators. _

_Outbreak took him by surprise, that came as shock to none of us. He went on, talking about how everything had been completely engulfed by chaos. The sound of gunshots, by both hysterics and desperate authorities trying to get the situation under control. In and out of the town, people were streaming in. Running away from somewhere else, running away from here. But to where ultimately, no one knew. There'd been hysteria on the social networks and news channels, with all the nutjobs and conspiracy theorists getting in their good hits at spreading misinformation, before the Internet and TV networks had collapsed. And soon after that, all power utilities that they'd taken for granted went as well. _

_Without electricity, without heating, without water… it made living after the initial outbreak just as much of a hell as it was surviving Week Zero. _

_Their tight-knit society had crumbled almost immediately, and an every-man-for-himself rulebook was written by the panic. Their town was still crawling with the infected, and as he said, that was nothing to say of all their "human" problems like the looters. Their police force, or what remained of it, had tried to maintain order to no avail. _

_It was the first time that Sean had ever shot anything with his police pistol. _

"_It's nothing like the movies and TV, the ways the bullets make their marks on bodies and just how all that blood and gore comes out. And no amount of training ever prepared me could've ever prepared me…" He shook his head then. "And the sad thing is, what I was killing weren't human no more. They were already infected, but back then…"_

_He didn't finish, but we knew. Back in the earliest days after the outbreak, when it was hard to discern what was fact and what was utter bullshit. When we still thought that it could be possible that there was still a shred of humanity in the infected, that the human that they once more could've been salvaged. Maybe some people still do. _

"_The first human I killed were a group of looters. They'd been trying to break it into an apartment, but they hadn't expected on the occupants being present. We arrived, tried to defuse things. But my partner saw that things were turning ugly, and without making an order, he shot one of the looters to make the rest run. Just like that. He just shot the kid, couldn't have been any older than nineteen, right between the eyes. And you know, he was my partner. He'd been my senior, the guy I'd run with, since I joined the force. He was someone to look up to, the model cop. But then he just goes and shoots someone like that, the way he did it… and even though it was the right thing, that one death was better than a lot, I didn't feel good one bit about what we'd just done. They weren't bad people… they hadn't been looking to hurt anyone. All they wanted was some food, medicine, clean water… they were just looking out for themselves and their close ones and they'd gotten desperate." _

_So what happened, one of them had to ask. _

"_We were going to collapse, all hell would break lose, that was certain to everyone who hadn't run or died yet. But one day, there seemed to be some hope. They'd come to town at last, when the smoke from all the fires we'd been lighting for warmth was still hanging in the air, making the sky black. We hadn't seen any fully blue skies forever. You should've seen them. Roaring helicopters, giant tanks, dressed head-to-toe in body armor and carrying an armory that would make Rambo blush… we thought they were here to save us. After all, we were American people. They were American military personnel. Wasn't that their job? And instead…" He sighed, almost futilely. "I was one of the survivors. I ran. Didn't know what to make of the world after that. Everything I thought I knew had rotted or gone. I burned my uniform, after that. Too many people saw that, hoping that I was someone they could latch onto… I tried to be that, for a time. But I fucked up. Too many people died because of me. So I tried to solo things for a while…"_

"_So why'd you come with us?" I asked him._

"_Crazy as it sounds, I just missed human contact… the good kind." _

_Dole_

_I'd been living in my car out of the parking lot of a dingy motel in a shit-end map tack mark near the state border when the outbreak hit. I was lucky, in that regard. All of them had been in towns or cities, but me? The place I'd been living at, trying to find work, wasn't even on the map as far as I knew. Less than a hundred folks were living there. Yeah, there were infected, but nothing on the scale that everyone else experienced._

_But on the road afterwards, that's when the world started to turn red. There were many times when I felt a desire to stop and try to help, but I just drove by. Tried to blink what I'd seen out of my memory. I had to survive, no matter what. My thoughts became fixated on Katie and Jess. _

_Eventually, I ran out of gas. I hadn't been keeping up with current events to my best. All I knew that some people had gone crazy and they were killing… fuck, even eating other people. Like a goddamn Romero flick, only these fuckers were fast. Didn't even have a gun on me. Just a rusty crowbar. I hoofed it to a gas station, and was about to walk in. That's where I met Dole. When he tackled me like it was the Super Bowl. _

_After initial misgivings, and a broken nose and a black eye, he took out a flashlight he was carrying and he shined it into the gas station. That's when I learned from him what the spores did, and how I'd almost fucked up myself. He let me join him in his car, a Mustang, with two buddies of his. Gave me my first gun. He said he and his crew had come out of Philly. The city was on fire and the streets red when they'd gotten out. They were heading to Pittsburgh. They'd heard rumors about a special fort-like place being built there, a Quarantine City or something around that line. _

_We lost the two buddies on the way, but me and Dole stuck together. Became friends, in a sense. He was the muscle, and while I wasn't the smartest of smarts, I was resourceful. We never did make it to Pittsburgh, but what mattered was that we survived. Survived long enough to make it to the town where the high school was and there we continued to try to survive. _

_Dole didn't say much about himself to us. "All you need to know is that once, I was someone else." I noticed Sean seeming very uncomfortable when he'd said that. And I started to worry. Divided we fall, they say. "But I'm not that person anymore. The past is the past, and I want you all to know that I'm here to help you all."_

_Rad-Man_

_His real name's Brad. But we've all come to call him Rad-Man. Because of the radio he carries on him. The thing looks like a Frankenstein of nuts and bolts, but it works like a charm. He was at the park station, fiddling with its knobs. He's tech-savvy, so that was enough of a reason for us to bring him along with us. But I've seen him with his Cabela. He's not the next Buffalo Bill, that's for certain. But still, the signals the radio picks up keeps us up to date. Some of the things we've heard, we couldn't have guessed would've ever happened…_

_In a third-world cesspit, sure. But not in America…_

_I guess that was always the problem, maybe a part of the reason why the First World was hit so hard by the Cordyceps outbreak. But that's a can to be opened another day._

_Brad had always been on the fringe of society. Too interested in building things to care about the world outside of the one he lived in. He said he'd been good at staying unnoticed and running. That's how he was able to survive the first week. He'd run to his parents, hoping they'd know what to do, what was going on. _

"_Instead, that's when I woke up." Brad said as he shook his head. "They'd… my mom and dad, they killed themselves. They didn't even write any sort of notes or anything that explained why. They just sat down next to each other on that old couch where they used to watch TV when I was a kid and… and… they didn't own any guns. Or anything that'd make it quick. They'd slit their wrists, both of them, and died together. And after seeing them like that, my parents, I immediately knew that I didn't want to end up like that."_

"_How the hell did you survive?" Sean asked him. "You don't look like the type of kid whose folks shipped off to survival camp…"_

"_I loved the Internet. There was always something new to learn. And you know, other things…" He actually blushed. "All this irrelevant shit that built up from surfing the Web, some of it helped. But it only got me thinking when it wasn't keeping me alive by less than an inch. How could I remember this but not what my mom used to say to me every day before I went to school? Shit, whenever I think about them, I feel like I wasted my life and I feel horrible. And now this comes and happens…"_

_The Smiths_

_Mr. Smith gave their names as Jack and Jane Smith. Right… and I'm starting to wonder if their last names really are Smith, either. _

_They were twin siblings. They'd always been close. Liked the same shit shows and bands, attended the same athletic activities and never liked playing on opposite teams, and always made sure to get each other gifts at Christmas and birth dates. She was her brother's best friend and he was hers, Jane said. They were college kids, who were rooming together. They had driven home for the weekend to visit their parents at the hometown. Right before the outbreak. _

_Mom had gotten infected. Dad had died getting the two of them to safety. That was all Jane said before nudging a bit closer to her brother as he put his arm around her. Jack said that's when they'd run into RP and Chris and Stevie and Craig and some people who'd died by the time the rest of us turned up. The two had been their gym and science teachers respectively at the high school. With nowhere else to go, Jack and Jane had hitched back to the not-so hallowed halls of no-more-learning-anymore. _

"_I'm not going to let anything bad happen to Jane. So watch yourselves around her. If I think any of you are up to something, I'll be sure to…" Jack's words before she cut him off._

"_Take it easy. All of you. Jack just really cares about me. And so do I. We've always been close. We got our black belts in taekwondo class together, we studied for our finals and aced them together, we survive together. Nothing will tear us apart. If my brother goes, so will I." Jane nodded._

_That explains a lot. And opens up a few more doors of possibility regarding the two than I'd like. And their words made me remember people I'd loved once with that level of devotion. But my resolve hadn't been up to walking. All it had been good for was talking. And when that moment came, I didn't go. I stayed, with my hand half-heartedly held out, trying to reach for nothing. Letting everything slip by… the loves of my life._

_Cipher_

_Says nothing. Said nothing tonight. Just trails behind us. Shooting, gathering, and then getting back to walking with her head downcast behind the rest of us. When Sean asked her, there was almost a glimmer. Something in her eyes lighting up, like she did have to something to say. But then it burned out almost instantly, and there she was back to looking down at the dirt. _

_Michael _

_What could I tell them? I just told them I'd met up with Dole, and I'd stuck by him ever since. Told them nothing else. Nothing about Katie or Jess. Nothing about Mom's funeral or how Dad died. And especially nothing about Dad's old rowboat he always took to the center of the lake and the time I took the rowboat to the lake to try and find answers I never did. _

_That's my life and it's been off kept to myself._

_**September 30**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_We need a plan beyond the immediate game of hunting and gathering. We need to know where we're going. But no one's put forward any longshot suggestions thus far. We're almost out of the woods now. We haven't seen any infected for days now. But that's not much to celebrate over. Eventually, we'll run low. And with that, our moods. And soon enough, if that happens, we'll start turning on each other. And it'll be like the fall of RP's paradise all over again. _

_I don't want that to happen._

_**October 1**__**st**__**, 2014**_

"_Why are you writing that?" Jack asked me as the rest were disassembling camp to begin another rough day of hiking through the wilderness and towards the edge of civilization. _

"_How would I know?" _

"_Because you have to have a reason for doing so. Otherwise you'd be using it to wipe your ass like the rest of us do with the papers we find." _

"_I never thought of myself as the writing type. But it's been something that I've been doing on and off again since I was a kid. Ironic, isn't it?"_

"_Yeah, yeah, whatever."_

"_So, are you really Jane's bro?" Dole asked us as he walked up._

"_Yeah, why are you asking?" _

"_Everyone talks about it, out of your earshot." I said. "I don't care what the hell it is you two are, but everyone thinks that you're awfully protective of her for a brother."_

"_Whatever you bastards really are thinking, it's no different from all the rumors they used to toss about us at school. And just like those rumors, they aren't fucking true. You don't know a single fucking thing about the bond I have with her. Sure, you may have had a brother or sister or something like that in your life, but you didn't have a twin, did you? You don't know what it's like to care for someone in a world where at any moment you could lose them, do you?"_

"_Yeah, I guess you're right." I said as I walked away as Dole continued to rib Jack. Petty, but I guess that's how Dole deals with the world around him. Got to get your laughs anyway possible or the world eats you alive madly. _

_**October 3**__**rd**__**, 2014**_

_At last, we're out of the woods. Too late for my feet, though. Both of 'em have gotten blisters. For a couple of days now. I've gotten used to the pain now, but this doesn't bode well. My socks are full of holes, and my boots are wearing away. If it rains, I think I may very well be fucked. _

_We're resting up at someone's hillside house. The type the wealthy would buy when they needed somewhere nice to live that was far away from all the little people like us, the way Dad worded it to me. It's not anywhere we can hole up for long. Food, medicine, most of that was missing in our inspection of the place. The garage was empty, and all the extra gallons of gasoline made off with. In the driveway was the rotting body that was being picked on by carrion. It looked like he'd tried to jump off the roof, but he hadn't died on impact. He'd had enough time to write "I'm sorry…" with his blood which had become smudged. _

_We saw why he was sorry. On a large bed in the second floor. Three bodies, covered up by sheets stained with large red splotches. Cipher ran out when she saw them. Rad-Man later told me that she was crying outside and angrily kicking the body in the driveway before Sean pulled her away. _

_I think the sooner we're out of this place, the better. _

_**October 4**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_I've been thinking more about writing. I've described myself as not the writing type, but there has to be a reason, like Jack said, for me to have done this since childhood. _

_And now, I think I know the reason why. It was the only thing that I ever was really good at, something that I could come back to over and over again. Not like all the jobs I've held. Not like the parents, growing weaker and weaker with each day. Not like my ex-wife and daughter, after I turned their love into hatred. _

_Writing is power. With a few words, people have made history. It was a sanctuary made from armor forged by typewriters and keyboards. It provided me with the tools to fashion a new record. To put words into mouths that were never there. To give me a power that I never had. But it's not working. _

_Because my father died by the hands of his own son in a fit of decades of repressed rage finally breaking. His body was in the rowboat when I took it to the center of the Minnesota lake where I dumped him, and then broke down completely in the rowboat. It was just a few days after Mom's funeral. I thought he'd finally done it, even as Uncle Luke kept telling me how much Dad loved her. I followed him to the lake after the funeral, and knocked him out with a shovel and kept hitting and hitting until my arms felt like they would fall off and the blade of the shovel had broken off. _

_After his water-bloated body washed back onto shore, I started running east. I tried phoning Jess but she hung up the moment she recognized my voice. Fuck, she fucking loved me. I fucking loved her. We could've had everything but I fucked everything up. And they hated me for it afterwards. I could never say sorry. Never never. _

_**October 7**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_We follow the road now these days. _

_And try to ignore the growling in our bellies, the soreness in our legs, the growing desire to fall asleep and never wake up again…_

_**October 11**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_We spotted a town off in the distance. Maybe there are other survivors there. Maybe there's community and civilization. And as far-fetched as it may seem, maybe there's hope. _

_It's also the one-year anniversary of my journal, but I don't have any more words to say. _

_**October 13**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_Tomorrow we reach town. Everyone's been talking about it. No one knows what'll be there. But everyone hopes that it's something good._

_**October 14**__**th**__**, 2014**_

_Today I learned a new meaning of fright. We were passing through the town. It was empty, or so we had thought. _

_Ray-Man hadn't been looking where he was walking, and it was too late as we heard the wire go snap. Poor kid had no time to scream before a crude mechanism fired a bolt into him, pinning him to the wall. But he had plenty of time to start screaming afterwards. Dole took a step towards him, but then then a part of the wall burst. _

_Sean screamed something about a gun and we all scrambled towards cover. We could hear footsteps, rushing towards us. Five people dressed shabbily were coming out of hiding spots, with guns and hand-held weapons like clubs that looked like they'd been assembled blind from random objects plucked from the ground. _

"_Run!" Sean yelled at Cipher and the Smiths. Without asking, Dole and I stayed behind with Sean to cover their flight. _

_It did not surprise me, how easily… almost casually, we pulled the triggers of our weapons as we lined every attacker in our sights. How easy it became to forget that they were people just like us, and instead just see them as problems needing a quick lead wash-up. Everything was leading up to this point. Maybe everything already was at this point. Why else would we have had dark ages in history, where all civilization and society has been crumbled away and the only thing left is a burning, primal desire to survive… no matter the cost. _

_But we were running low on ammo, and their numbers seemed infinite. We were bound to be overrun… but then we heard something that was completely unnatural. A guttural, abnormal clicking noise. From the shadows. _

_And then they came from the shadows. They looked like the infected… but it couldn't be. At the moment, what we were seeing couldn't have been real. Couldn't have been believed. Their clothing hung on them in rotted tatters. Fungi-like growths covered all visible patches of bare skin. Their teeth were cracked, bloody nubs. And they had no eyes, for their heads looked like something had burst them open like a kernel of corn in the microwave. Seen but not believed… but they forced themselves into our belief as one of the clicking things lurched with a jerky motion towards one of our attackers. He tried to hold it off but its strength was abnormal. None of it seemed real, but the blood as it bit into his throat and tore it out was._

"_Fuck me." Sean._

"_Shit…" Dole._

"_Run." Me._

"_Don't fucking leave me!" Ray-Man screaming as the clickers tore our hunters apart in front of him. One of them heard his voice, and with a clicking noise, it cocked its head towards him before snarling and sprinting._

_It was too late to save him. But we could change the manner of his death. A lose-lose situation, but sometimes, the degree makes all the difference. So Dole fired the shot and there went Ray-Man. But then they were realized we were there._

_So we ran. With the sounds of their clicks following us all the way. It seemed like we'd never lose them, but then there was the sound of another gunshot. From behind us. The people who'd been hunting us still wanted us, it seemed. And the infected were off again. _

_That's when we figured out those things must've been guided by sound, like a bat's echolocation. So we crept, careful not to make any noise, careful not to run into anyone else. And the only thing I could hear were the beating thumps of my heart. I wasn't even sure if I was breathing anymore. _

_We caught up with the rest of our party later. There was a house at the outskirts of town. Jack and Jane were holding a woman and her two sickly looking children at gunpoint. _

"_Can you believe it?" Cipher said. Her first words to us. She pointed at a dusty dinner plate. On top of it were bones with cut marks on them. Bones that looked like no animal's. _

"_Don't… don't blame us…" The woman was whimpering to us. "We didn't mean anything by… by it… we're so sorry… sorry… but all of us are hungry. There's no more food where we can get it. Too many of those… those clickers. And we're tired of starving. Watching our children and families starving. We… we had no choice… we had to… to… set up the traps…"_

"_There's always a fucking choice." Jack said, but I put my hand on his shoulder._

"_These poor bastards, either way, are in hell. Why waste a bullet?" _

_He lowered his gun. _

_**October 21**__**st**__**, 2014**_

_A week since the encounter with the cannibals and the clickers has passed. _

_We've moved on. _

_I don't know what's more unreal. Just how far will the infection develop, if the clickers are anything to go by? Or that already, people have become this desperate in our quest to survive. How long will it be, before we're exactly like the people back in that town? But I guess that's just the rules of the universe. Everything will eventually lead to chaos._

_I should know. I felt it deep down, underneath the Michael mask I had constructed and worn for myself ever since childhood, during all those times. When I hit my daughter that one time and saw how afraid she was of her own father and I realized that I was truly my father's son. When Jess and Katie left me, and all I could do instead of say sorry or beg for forgiveness was stand and watch before going to brew in self-loathing. I can write it differently, but no matter what, the words I put in my head can't change my past. When my father recognized me right before I swung the blade of the shovel into his face and almost split his head. When I looked down the sights of a rifle and pulled a trigger, taking off a man's head because it was either me or him._

_I know how far I'll go to survive._

_You know, this reminds me of a talk I had with Sean yesterday. He was leaning against a tree, looking at something in his hand. It was his police badge._

"_I thought you said you burned your uniform."_

"_I did that. But I kept the badge."_

"_Why?"_

"_It was my dream as a child, to wear it. And just for a little while, my dream was real. It ended like crap, but I would give up my can of beans just to live it again. I tried to throw it away, but I couldn't. It was once the world to me, and maybe it'll be again."_

"_You really think that?"_

"_Michael…"_

"_Call me Mikey."_

"_Yeah, whatever. But a man's gotta hope in times like these. Otherwise we all would've put bullets into our brains long ago."_

_And I had to think, why do we survive, even when we've got nothing to live for? There's no family, no civilization, no end… just us and the human race floating by. _

_**October 31**__**st**__**, 2014**_

_We were lucky enough to bag a deer. As we roast it over the fire, the night-sky hangs over us. But for the first time in ages, I think I can see millions of stars. Like the way I remember it from my childhood, when I could look up and still wonder, innocence still remnant. And I find myself reaching up, forming a circle around stars with my hand, trying to make out constellations. To find a future for myself._

_We've been talking about the future, you know. We all want something different. Dole still wants to go to Pittsburgh, even though voices on Ray-Man's radio said that the people running the Quarantine Zones are gunning down anyone trying to enter. _

"_You aren't worried about being shredded by machine gun fire?" Jack asked._

"_We can sneak in, you fool."_

"_And what are the odds of that?" Jane asked._

"_If we didn't gamble with our odds, none of us would be here." Dole said._

_In between all the talks of martial law and rioting in the big cities, there was a woman's voice on the radio. _

"_Remember, when you're lost in the darkness, look for the light. Believe in the Fireflies. Maybe that's what we should do." Sean's suggestion._

"_Whatever you guys decide, I'll follow." Cipher._

"_Head west. Far away from here as possible. Maybe with luck, we'll make it all the way to San Francisco." _

"_Why San Francisco?" Jane asked me._

"_Hey, I've always wanted to piss into the ocean from atop the Golden Gate Bridge." I lied, not telling any of them that Jess and Katie had been living out of San Francisco before the outbreak. Maybe they were still out there… and wondering what happened to me just as I wonder what happened to them._

"_We'll be dead before we even make it to border, in all likelihood, brother." Dole said dryly. _

"_Oh well. At least we tried. That has to count for something, right?" And I began to hum a familiar tune from a band my father hated and a band I loved just because of that. And before long, we had all joined along in sing-along by the campfire. _

"_Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away  
>Now it looks as though they're here to stay<br>Oh, I believe in yesterday…"_

_I looked up at the moon shining above us. And I thought. I'm no saint. I'm not a good man. I killed my father because of an assumption. I was a lousy husband, a lousy father, and I drove away what mattered most to me. I should've killed myself. But I never did. _

_My moments of real happiness were long ago. With Jess by my side, Katie in my arms, hoping against reason that this would be it. Like the blue sky these days, they were covered up the clouds of misery and nihilism quickly. But the moments I had… I'd give up everything just to live them again ad infinitum. _

_But like Sean said, maybe one day happy days will come again. It's irrational to hope for such a thing, seeing the world like it is with us thrust back to the dark ages, but after every dark age – there's a renaissance. And sometimes, hope is all someone needs to survive. And I've found something to latch onto, something to fight for, something to keep me living. _

_That one day, I'll go far enough. And I'll see them once more. And I can see my wife and my daughter once more and tell them I'm sorry for everything. _

_It's something worth clawing my way out of hell for. An impossible, grandiose and ridiculous dream… but who better to dream big and impossible than a writer? So that's what I am, after the end of the world. A fucking writer. Oh, Dad would be laughing, if he wasn't burning in hell. I know I'll join him one day, but there's no reason why I have to make my life one despite all the signs demanding I do so._

_Hope…_

_Good-bye blue skies, it was nice seeing you. And maybe one day I'll dance underneath your endless azure once more._


End file.
